Brownfields Assessment, Cleanup and Redevelopment Exchange System Release Notes

This page provides release notes for the ACRES tool.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.05.040, was released Thursday, October 24, 2024. 

All Users 

All FY 2024 Cooperative Agreements (CAs) which were awarded as of October 3, 2024, have been added to the ACRES database for assessment, RLF, cleanup, job training, multipurpose and Section 128(a) state/tribal grants. These CAs are ready to be updated with property or job training information. In addition, where indicated by EPA, Current PoP End dates were updated, supplemental funding added, and some CAs were closed. 

CARs and EPA Project Officers

PALs Reporting:

The PALs due date for CARs has been corrected to December 13, 2024, on all PALs pages. Additionally, the CA number has been removed from the PALs pages. PALs reporting is based on the 128(a) State or Tribal name, and not the CA number. The number was removed to eliminate confusion. 

Property Profile Form (PPF) Part 2:

A requirements change has been implemented that makes the Institutional Controls (ICs) and Engineering Controls (ECs) fields mandatory when a property has an assessment completion date or a cleanup completion date saved on the PPF. More details can be found below. The PPF page cannot be saved until the fields are updated. 

There are also several other slight changes to fields on this part of the PPF. 

Assessment Information and Is Cleanup Necessary sections – When an assessment completion date is first entered in this section, a message is displayed reminding the user that ICs, ECs and the 'Is Cleanup Necessary?' sections must be completed. A new help icon has been added to the Cleanup Necessary section that provides detailed definitions and instructions for answering the question. 

Engineering and Institutional Controls section – the ICs and ECs sections have been consolidated into one section, which has been relocated just above the Environmental Cleanup Information section. New explanatory text has been provided explaining that in order for a property to achieve Ready for Anticipated Use (RAU), ECs and ICs must be in place or not required. Note that when a 'Yes' button is clicked in response to the question 'Are controls required for the property's anticipated use?,' the data entry fields are displayed. Clicking 'No' or 'Unknown' keeps the fields hidden. If the ICs and/or ECs are not yet known, select the option for 'Unknown' and update later when more details are available. Also note that a new date has been added to the bottom of the section. It collects the date the 'EC/IC Information was Last Reviewed.' This date should be updated whenever any EC/IC fields are added, updated or reviewed and is used as a reference point for whether  the IC/EC information is up-to-date. The EC/IC fields are mandatory, so the PPF page will not save until the questions are answered. 

Cleanup Info section – similar to assessments, when a cleanup completion date is first entered in this section, a message displays indicating that IC and EC fields need to be completed. Also, the 'Cleanup Completion Documentation' subsection has been relocated to follow the Cleanup Activity Start and Completion Date fields. It only displays after a cleanup completion date has been entered. 

Property Profile Form (PPF) Part 3: 

Climate Adaption and Mitigation – Redevelopment section – a new activity option has been added: Address climate risk factors and infrastructure or utility vulnerabilities through redevelopment. 

Property Profile Form (PPF) – Review and Submit Page:

Contaminants & Media section – in response to user requests to reduce confusion, when 'No Contaminants' or 'No Media' have been selected for this table on PPF Part 2, the previous 'yes/no' answers on the review page have been replaced with the words 'No Contaminant' or 'No Media.'

Quarterly Reports (QRs):

Several CAR users have requested the ability to enter QR data for a new quarterly reporting period during the reporting period. Previously, data entry couldn't be started until the day after the quarter ended. The QRs have been modified to allow the capability, beginning with FY25 Qtr 1 (which started October 1st). The new QRs can be created and updated as soon as the previous QR has been submitted for review. For example, as of October 1st, CARs are now able to update the previous quarter (FY24 Qtr4) AND the current quarter as well (FY25 Qtr1). The FY24 Qtr4 report should be completed during October and then submitted by October 30th. The FY25 Qtr1 report can be opened after the FY24 Qtr4 QR is submitted, as soon as October 1st (and through January 30th). It should be submitted between January 1st and 30th. 

Note that current period QRs cannot be submitted for PO review until after the quarter ends. In the example above, the FY25 Qtr1 can be submitted between January 1st-30th. 

Job Training (JT) CA Users

The CA type, 'Non-Coalition,' has been assigned to all JT CAs. This new field displays on the JT Home page in the 'Basic Info' section and will appear on JT-related reports in the future.

EPA Regional Data Administrators 

Regional Data Administrators have a new function that allows them to update a CA's Current PoP End date. To access this feature, click the 'Manage Regional CAs' link on the DATA ADMIN card on the home page. Select the CA to be updated, enter the new Current PoP End Date (this field is now editable in the Identifying Information section), click the 'Save and Continue to Review & Submit' button, and then click 'Submit.' This can be a useful tool when the PoP date needs modification between ACRES regularly scheduled updates using NGGS extracts. 

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.05.030, was released Monday, October 7, 2024.

EPA Project Officers

Program Accomplishment Report (PAR):

The PAR has been redesigned to better meet reporting needs, displaying new climate data and additional accomplishment totals. The report can be accessed from the 'Reports Center' card on the Home Page and from the 'Reports' drop-down menu at the top of every ACRES screen. The report auto selects the user's Region, unless the user is associated to more than one (then they will be required to select one or more regions to execute the report). 

The filter section was revamped so it has the look and feel of other new ACRES reports. Filters are divided into 4 sections: 

  • Primary filters (Accomplishment Type, CA Type/Number, Funding Type)
  • Secondary Filters (Accomplishment Year, Award Year, Announcement Year)
  • Geographic Filters (Region, State, County, Congressional District)
  • Other Filters (includes filters for Justice40, Climate, Tribal vs. Non-Tribal, and several others). 

Note that the default for most filters is 'ALL' options.

The Filter Results section has a Summary tab and a tab for each of the selected accomplishment types. For each of the accomplishment types selected for reporting, the Summary tab includes: 

  • Number of properties with an accomplishment 
  • Number of these properties with climate strategies (and percentage of properties with them)
  • Number of these properties located in a disadvantaged tract (and percentage of properties in one)

Each accomplishment type tab displays a table of CAs and their associated properties that can be tailored to a user's specific needs using the 'Add or Remove Table Columns' function. Each report line includes: 

  • Accomplishment year 
  • Location information
  • CA information 
  • Special funding type (BIL, ARRA)
  • Number of properties with the accomplishment 
  • Number of properties in disadvantaged census tract 
  • Number of properties with climate strategies 
  • The name of each property with the accomplishment (the name serves as a link to the Property Detail page)

There are two Alternate Options that allow users to view Job Training (JT) data or Specific CAs. These 2 options can be found under Primary Filters with the 'CA Type or Number' filter. 

  1. Job Training - note that JTs are reported by the CA Award Year, and not Accomplishment Year, so the filter for 'Accomplishment Year' is disabled. The JT reporting includes a Summary tab and a Details tab. The Summary tab lists a regional summary of training statistics including the 9 performance measure fields and the Average Hourly Wage. The Details tab includes JT data for each CA Award Year(s) selected: 
    • CA Award Year 
    • Location including Congressional Districts 
    • CA information 
    • Special funding type (BIL, ARRA)
    • Whether the CA is located within a census tract identified as disadvantaged 
    • Performance measure statistics 
    • Average hourly wage 
  2. Specific CA Number - this lists all the CA's associated properties which have an accomplishment. There are report columns displaying accomplishment counts, and a page/report totals summary at the bottom of the page. The property names are links to the property detail page in case the user wishes to see more details. 

The Filter Results table can be exported to Excel for further editing, printing and sharing. 

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.05.020, was released Thursday, August 29, 2024.

CARs and EPA Project Officers

Program Activity Levels (PALs) Report Updates: 

The annual PALs report for Section 128(a) State/Tribal grant recipients has been updated to include 4 new data fields. They are: 

  1. Total number of staff allocated to the response program and supported by CERCLA Section 128(a) funds
  2. Number of properties (or sites) a response program added to an inventory during the last federal fiscal year
  3. Number of properties (or sites) added to the public record during the last federal fiscal year 
  4. Number of community outreach events and/or site visits conducted or attended in the last federal fiscal year

To assist PALs users, most PALs data fields now have help text which defines key words. Detailed instructions are still available via a link in the top right corner of the form.

As a reminder, PALs reports will be available for updating on 10/01/2024 and are due 12/13/2024. There will be an on-line training class available to all PALs users on Wednesday, October 9th at 1 PM Eastern. Users can join the training from a link at the bottom of the Online ACRES Training Schedule page(https://www.epa.gov/brownfields/online-acres-training-schedule-brownfields-grantees)

Multipurpose Quarterly Report (QR):

This new QR has been designed to address the Terms & Conditions that specify reporting requirements for Multipurpose CAs. A team of EPA Regional project officers collaborated to ensure the new QR can be used for reporting in all 10 regions. It is recommended that Multipurpose CA recipients submit their Multipurpose QRs through ACRES. 

The report combines the functionality of both Cleanup and Assessment QRs because Multipurpose CAs capture both types of activity. These are the QR report tabs:

  • Project Progress tab – Users can create their own list of approved tasks to document project progress. A drop-down of task names provides a list of 6 options, plus there is a seventh to 'Add your own.' Also available (optional): 'Funding per Task' can be added if your region requests these details. To select the option, click the 'Yes' radio button where questioned 'Does your Region record funding per task?' (The default is 'No.') The following fields will display: funding sources, funding expended this quarter and funding expended to date (the latter is calculated by ACRES). 
  • Budget Summary tab – Similar to the Project Progress tab, users create their own list of expense categories (there are 8 available from the category drop-down list, plus the ability to add your own). On subsequent QRs, the budget table will be populated with the categories and cumulative funding spent that was entered in previous QR(s). This tab also has an optional data table to collect the breakdown of administrative costs. 
  • Property Specific Information tab – This tab allows the option to display only the associated properties a user needs to update this quarter. If a single property is associated to the CA, it appears automatically. If there are multiple properties, the user may select one, or many, or all properties to be updated. To use this feature, click the 'Select Property(ies)' drop down arrow, click the boxes for the properties to be updated, and then click the 'Show Properties' button. 
  • Subaward Monitoring tab – This tab is applicable to CAs that have a subaward. If your CA has a subaward, click the 'Yes' button; otherwise, you can skip this tab. If you clicked 'Yes,' you'll be able to enter the subaward information in appropriate text boxes. Note that multiple subawards can be entered. 
  • Overall CA Progress tab – This tab has 3 sections. 
    • The first –  a table that displays the number of CA accomplishments approved this quarter and approved to date. The information is extracted from ACRES and is for your information. 
    • The second – contains 5 text areas to collect information on the overall progress of the CA, including sufficient progress.
    • The third – allows users to add attachments to the QR. The instructions for Attachments state: Upload attachments that pertain to your quarterly report. Acceptable formats include .pdf, .xls or .xlsx. Attachments will be viewable in the Previous Quarterly Reports (QRs) column of the Manage QRs page. Please do not upload site-specific reports, such as QAPPs, Phase I or Phase II Reports, etc. If an item is too large to upload, please email it to your Project Officer. 
  • Review & Submit tab – This tab displays a summary of all other QR tabs. Note that there is a 'Submit for Review' button at the bottom of the page. Click the button after all QR information has been entered/reviewed and is ready for Project Officer review. There is also a 'Print Quarterly Report' button at the bottom of the page which allows the user to create a PDF of the report to save and share.

An on-line training class for all Multipurpose users will take place on Wednesday, September 25th from 1:00-2:30 PM Eastern. To join, click the link available at the bottom of the Online ACRES Training Schedule page (https://www.epa.gov/brownfields/online-acres-training-schedule-brownfields-grantees). 

QR Subaward Monitoring Tab:

A CAR may use subawards to partner with units of government or non-profit organizations provided the subaward complies with EPA's Subaward Policy for EPA Assistance Agreement Recipients. A link to the policy has been added to the top of the Subaward Monitoring tab for Assessment, Cleanup, and Multipurpose QR types. This is the link: (Grants Policy Issuance (GPI) 16-01: EPA Subaward Policy for EPA Assistance Agreement Recipients | US EPA).

EPA Project Officers

Regional Climate Summary Report:

The climate summary report now contains an 'Add or Remove Table Columns' button that will allow POs to customize the information displayed on the filter results table. It is available for the Properties, K7 TA Communities and CTA Projects tabs. The Add/Remove Columns function displays the unique data fields applicable to each of the tabs, so each drop-down is already tailored for the tabs. 

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.05.010, was released Monday, August 5, 2024.

Contractor Technical Assistance (CTA) Users: 

  • Adding Older Projects. Older CTA projects which may not have the detailed information available for newer projects, can now be added to ACRES. To add an older project, select 'Unknown' for the Contractor Name and 'Not Applicable' for Subcontractor Name. This selection automatically fills several subsequent fields and allows the user to enter CTA information for project recipient, location, budget, background, TA provided, environmental impacts/climate change and project completion. The CTA work packages should be submitted for PO review and will be processed the same as newer CTA projects.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.05.000, was released Thursday, June 27, 2024. 

Technical Assistance (K7 TA) Users: 

  • Add/Edit a K7 TA Community: In the 'Technical Assistance Provided' section, instead of entering all dates (month/day/year) that apply for K7 TA Communities, users now enter all months (month/year) that apply. A new pop-up displays for that 'Applicable Date(s)' field so users can easily select a month/year combination. This improvement was a request from K7 TA users. 
  • Edit a Community or Multi-Community Project: When a TA user creates a work package for updating a community/multi-community, the project work package will remain locked until the user submits it for review and it is approved. TA CARs will notice a new column, WP Owner, on their Manage TA Communities page. This column lists an owner's name if the TA work package is in 'Edits in Progress' or 'Ready for Regional Review' status, indicating the work package is locked. If you need to update the community or multi-community project and it's locked by another TA user, contact the listed owner or the ACRES Help Desk. 

CARs and EPA Project Officers 

  • Cleanup Quarterly Report and Assessment Quarterly Report (QR): 
    • The small business disclaimer that appeared at the top of each QR has been removed as it is no longer applicable. 
    • On the Budget Summary tab, for older CAs awarded prior to 2021 and designated with both hazardous and petroleum funding, the QR has been modified to contain funding tables for both types of funding. Note there are only a few of these CAs still reporting. They have 4 funding tables available on the tab: 
      • Total Budget Table for Hazardous Substance Funding 
      • Breakdown of Administrative Costs for Hazardous Substance Funding 
      • Total Budget Table for Petroleum Funding 
      • Breakdown of Administrative Costs for Petroleum Funding 
    • On the Property Specific Information tab, the Quality section has been expanded to collect the following 4 dates: 
      • QEP Services Procured - new for Assessment QRs
      • Site-Specific QAPP Approval Date(s) - new for Cleanup QRs
      • SAP Approval Date(s) - new for Cleanup QRs 
      • QAPP Addenda Approval Date(s) - new for Cleanup QRs
  • Assessment CA Detail Page: For all open assessment CAs, a new line of information for 'Assessment Subtype' displays at the top of CA Detail page. It is located under the 'CA Type' field. Subtypes can be Assessment Coalition, Community-wide Assessment (CWA), Community-wide Assessment Grant for States and Tribes (CWAGST), or Site-specific Assessment. The specific subtype was populated on the back-end in ACRES for open FY23 and earlier CAs, and this process will continue as future Assessment CAs are added to ACRES (i.e., POs and CARs do not populate the subtype). The assessment subtype field will be added to ACRES reports and filters/searches in future releases. 

EPA Users: 

  • EPA-level ACRES reports: Project Officers and Regional users will notice a new 'search box' at the top of many of the report filter option listings. This helpful feature provides a quick way to select a filter option, for example, to select the state of 'Michigan' from the list of all 50 states plus territories. As letters are typed into the search box, the list of options is reduced to those containing the letters typed. The search box has been added for filters with a longer list of options including Announcement Year, Award Year, Congressional District, Project Officers, etc. 

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.160, was released Tuesday, June 4, 2024. 

Grant Recipients

Grant Fact Sheets for FY24 Multipurpose, Assessment, and Cleanup (MAC) Grants are now available. On May 20, 2024, EPA announced the 178 communities were selected to receive 181 grant awards for a total of $231 million in funding for Brownfields MAC Grant programs. If you'd like to view them, click the link: Brownfields Grant Fact Sheet Search.

CARs and EPA Project Officers

  • Cleanup Quarterly Report (QR): on the Project Progress and Budget Summary tabs, the drop-down menu option for selecting the task/expense category for "Other" has been renamed "[Add your own]." 
  • Quarterly Report for Assessment Cooperative Agreements (CAs): This QR has been redesigned to better address the Terms & Conditions that specify reporting requirements for Assessment CAs. A team of EPA Regional project officers collaborated to ensure the new QR can be used for reporting in all 10 regions. It is recommended that Assessment CA recipients submit their Assessment QRs through ACRES. Note that if you previously submitted QRs in ACRES, the information from your last QR will be transferred to the new report format starting with the FY24 Quarter 3 report (no need to reenter data that carries over). 

The major changes include: 

  • Project Progress tab – Users can create their own list of approved tasks to document project progress (previously 5 tasks appeared in the task table). In addition, the text boxes that previously appeared on the bottom of this tab have been removed. Optional: 'Funding per Task' can be added if your region requests these details. To select the option, click the 'Yes' radio button where questioned 'Does your Region record funding per task?' (Note the default is "No"). The following fields will display: funding sources, funding expended this quarter and funding expended to date (the latter is calculated by ACRES). 
  • Budget Summary tab – The data collected is similar to the previous version. If this is a first QR for your CA, you can create your own list of expense categories (previously 8 expenses appeared in the table). There is now also an optional data table to collect the breakdown of administrative costs. 
  • Property Specific Information tab – The data collected is the same as before, but a new feature has been added to help display only the associated properties you'd like to update this quarter. If there is only one associated property, it appears automatically. If there are multiple properties, you can select one or many or all properties to be updated. To use this feature, click the 'Select Property' button, select properties to update from the drop-down list, and then click the 'Show Properties' button. 
  • Subaward Monitoring tab – This is a new tab and is applicable to CAs that have a subaward. If your CA has a subaward, click the 'Yes' button; otherwise you can skip this tab. If you clicked 'Yes,' you'll be able to enter the subaward information in appropriate text boxes. Note that multiple subawards can be entered. 
  • Overall CA Progress tab – This tab has 3 sections. 
    • The first is a table that will display the CA accomplishments approved this quarter and approved to date. The information is extracted from ACRES  and is for your information. 
    • The second contains 5 text areas to collect information on the overall progress of the CA, including sufficient progress. 
    • Last, you can now add attachments to your QR. These will also be viewable from the 'Manage Quarterly Reports' page. The instructions for Attachments state: Upload attachments that pertain to your quarterly report. Acceptable formats include .pdf, .xls or .xlsx. Attachments will viewable in Previous Quarterly Reports (QRs) column of the Manage QRs page. Please do not upload site-specific reports, such as QAPPs, Phase I or II Reports, etc. If an item is too large to upload, please email it to your Project Officer. 
  • Review & Submit tab – This tab is unchanged. It displays a summary of all other QR tabs. Note that there is a "Submit for Review" button at the bottom of the page. Click the button after all QR information has been entered/reviewed and is ready for Project Officer review. There is also a 'Print Quarterly Report' button at the bottom of the page which allows you to create a PDF of the report to save and share. 

EPA Users: 

  • Assessment Accomplishments logic: Effective June 3, 2024, an assessment accomplishment is only counted when a Phase I, Phase II, or Supplemental Assessment is completed (i.e., the logic does not count an assessment accomplishment when only Cleanup Planning and/or Site Reuse Planning is populated). Note that accomplishments previously counted under Cleanup Planning or Site Reuse Planning will remain counted. 
  • For all EPA level ACRES reports, the following filter options are now included: 
    • CA Announcement Year
    • Special Funding Type (useful for filtering BIL funded activities) 

 We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.150, was released Thursday, May 2, 2024.

Technical Assistance (TA) Users

  • A new K7 TA Detail page is available that provides an overview of work progress for the TA. The top of the page displays basic CA information including announcement year, award date, project period, funding, and CA contact information. The bottom of the page contains two lists of information – one for communities and one for multi-community projects. For each community addressed by the TA, the communities list has location information, community type, community name and ID with a link to the community detail page, work package status, and also lists the number of TA community records, number of communities with disadvantaged tracts, and the number with climate strategies. The multi-community projects list displays project name and ID (with a link to the project details page), type of assistance and work package status. At the top of each list are buttons to Add a Community (or Multi-Community Project) and another to Export the table to an Excel spreadsheet that can be edited, saved, and shared. 
  • K7 TA  – Step 2 for Editing a Community. A new data column has been added to the 'Step 2 in Editing a K7 TA Community' page. Located in the 'Technical Assistance Provided' table, there is a data entry box for 'Internal Identifier (Optional).' K7 TA users can use it for their individual tracking needs. Help text clearly identifies that this field is optional.

CARS and EPA Project Officers 

  • Multipurpose CAs. After discussion with Multipurpose CA users, it was determined that not all properties associated with this CA type require cleanup. Previously, properties associated with this grant type defaulted to 'cleanup IS required,' and the field could not be changed. ACRES has been updated to allow CARS to change the 'Is cleanup necessary?' field to 'yes,' 'no,' or 'unknown' (this is located on the Property Profile Form, Step 2).
  • CA Details page. The property names listed on the CA Home page (in the Properties Addressed by this CA, Assessment Activities, Cleanup Activities, Institutional and Engineering Controls, and Redevelopment and Other Leveraged Accomplishment sections) now contain a link to the property details page. Click the property link and ACRES opens the Property Detail page. 

EPA Project Officers

  • Brownfields RLF Form. When a CAR updates funding information in the Brownfields RLF Form's Program Income Balance fields, the "Is the PI balance known?' field will be set to 'yes.' Subsequently, the PO will not have to answer this question when they open one of these updated Brownfields RLF Forms to review. 

 We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.140, was released Thursday, April 4, 2024.  

CARs and EPA Project Officers

  • Advanced Search - new hyperlink: after a user selects their filter criteria and executes a search, the Advanced Search provides a list of CAs and properties that match the criteria. These results display in a table which contains a new hyperlink for each of the CA and property names listed. Click the CA or Property hyperlink and the associated Details page opens in a new tab. This allows users to quickly navigate to the record of interest. The improvement was requested by one of our ACRES users. 
  • Cleanup Quarterly Report (QR): the first Cleanup QRs using the redesigned format have been submitted and approved for FY24 Qtr 1. User feedback has resulted in the following updates: 
    • Project Progress tab - the redesigned  QR required users to input task funding for each approved task added to the report. Discussion with several regions determined that not all regions will be tracking funding by task. As a result, there is a new prompt at the top of the tab page that asks users, 'Does your region record funding per task?' If your region does, click the 'Yes' radio button. The 'Funding Source for Task,' 'Funding Expended this Quarter,' and 'Funding Expended to Date' fields will be displayed for all tasks. If your region does not, click the 'No' radio button and the funding fields are hidden. Note: for new CAs submitting their first QR, the default is 'No.'
    • Budget Summary tab - the expense categories on this tab will now appear in the same order as presented on the expense drop-down list. Previously, the expense categories displayed in alphabetical order.
    • Overall CA Status - the 'Sufficient Progress' section has been simplified to a text data entry field. Previously users had to select an activity from a drop-down list and add a date. Sufficient Progress information entered this way for the FY24 Qtr 1 QR will display in the text box for subsequent QRs.
  • Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) Title Change: In ACRES, all instances of the title 'Technical Assistance to Brownfields' or 'TAB,' including all associated data entry fields and reporting, have been changed to 'K7 Technical Assistance' or 'K7 TA.' The change is being implemented to minimize confusion between Contractor Technical Assistance (CTA) and Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB), which share similar names. Also, the more general title of K7 TA covers the inclusion of other TA grants (besides TAB grants) that are awarded in the Brownfields program.

EPA Project Officers

  • Project Officers Associated to RLF CAs: Similar to the link added for CARs in a previous sprint, a link has been added to your home page providing easy navigation to the RLF Form. It displays on your 'Work Packages' card, with a help icon that provides details on reporting requirements and access to detailed instructions. Click the link to 'Update RLF Form' and ACRES displays a list of RLFs for which you are responsible. Click the radio button adjacent to an RLF to access the RLF Form. Note that using the 'Update RLF Form' creates a convenient 'check list' of RLF Forms that need your attention quarterly (all RLFs in Open status) and annually (RLFs in Post-Closeout status). Note: All RLF CAs in Open status must have a completed RLF Form that is updated quarterly. We are also working towards having a completed RLF Form that is updated annually for all RLFs in Post-Closeout status (i.e., information is currently populated for CARs with FY18 or later Closeout Agreements, and information should be added as it becomes available for CARs with pre-FY18 Closeout Agreements).

 We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.130, was released Tuesday, March 26, 2024.  

CARs and EPA Project Officers

  • Property Details Page: the dashboard for Property Progress (top right-hand corner of page) has been improved to include a column of status titles. Previously, each property accomplishment displayed only an icon.  This improvement gives the viewer a better understanding of the property status at a quick glance. In addition, the updated dashboard displays several new statuses. For example:
    • Institutional Controls (IC) and Engineering Controls (EC) each have two new statuses: 'Not Applicable' (if user identifies that either the IC or EC is not required) and 'Unknown' (if the user identifies that it is not known whether the IC or EC is required).
    • Cleanup and Assessment have a new status: 
      • If a property is associated ONLY to an assessment CA, the cleanup status will be 'Data Unavailable in ACRES' because cleanup data is not expected/required. The status will change if a user enters cleanup information.
      • Likewise, if a property is associated ONLY to a cleanup or RLF CA, the assessment status will be 'Data Unavailable in ACRES' because assessment data is not expected/required. The status will change if the user enters assessment data. 

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.120, was released Thursday, February 1, 2024.

CARs and EPA Project Officers

  • Users Associated to RLF CAs: For users responsible for quarterly or annual reporting of Program Income information, a link has been added to your home page for easy navigation to the RLF Form. It can be found in the ‘WHERE DO I START?’ card and is titled ‘Update RLF Form.’ There is a help icon next to the link which provides details on reporting requirements and access to detailed instructions.
  • Technical Assistance (TA) Title Change: In ACRES, all instances of the title ‘Technical Assistance’, referring to contract funded Technical Assistance, including all associated data entry fields and reporting, have been changed to Contractor Technical Assistance or CTA. Wherever ‘Technical Assistance’ or ‘TA’ was previously displayed, ‘Contractor Technical Assistance’ or ‘CTA’ will be displayed instead. The change is being implemented to minimize confusion between Contractor Technical Assistance (CTA) and Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB), which share similar names.
  • ACRES Screens: You may notice some subtle color changes in ACRES (headers, buttons, links, etc.) as the system is under review/update to meet 508 compliance. Updates are being made so that ACRES meets statutory requirements and legal obligations, ensuring equal access for all members of the public and federal employees with disabilities. This effort will continue for the next several months.

EPA Project Officers

  • Regional Cooperative Agreement Summary Report: A minor correction was made for reporting Job Training data. The ‘average hourly wage’ total at the bottom of the report displays averages across all the CAs on the report page/report total. Previously, the totals displayed a sum of all wages, not the average.

EPA Regional Data Coordinators

  • Data Admin - Change Work Package Owner: Several improvements were made to this recently updated utility.
  • Regional data coordinators have access to all work packages within their region that are in ‘Regional Review’ status.
  • When a work package owner is updated, the status ‘Regional Review’ is retained so that the regional data coordinator can verify the changes made. Previously the status was changed to ‘Ready for Regional Review,’ which excluded the work package from displaying on the list of updateable work packages.
  • The ‘Current WP Status’ filter drop down has been changed to list only ‘Regional Review’ since that is the only work package status that regional data coordinators can modify.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.110, was released Friday, January 12, 2024.

CARs and EPA Project Officers

  • Cleanup Accomplishments: In order for a property cleanup to be considered an ‘accomplishment’ it must have specific information in place. EPA tracks accomplishments closely and has annual targets to meet.

In summary, for a property to have a cleanup accomplishment it must have the following data:

  • EPA funding
  • Cleanup start date
  • Cleanup completion date
  • Cleanup completion documentation
  • Engineering Controls (ECs): If required, then ECs must be in place OR if not required, then the EC condition is met for cleanup.

The ECs are included in the required data list effective this release.

  • Property Profile Form (PPF) Climate Adaption and Mitigation sections: An optional text area was added to the climate activities. When a user clicks a climate activity box to select it, a text box appears for collecting additional information if needed. Note this is optional. This change affects the climate adaption and mitigation sections for all 3 ACRES sections – assessment, cleanup, and redevelopment. The text will also display on the review page and on the Property Details page.
  • Properties associated to Post-Closeout RLFs: For most properties associated to an RLF CA, cleanup is required (the PPF ‘Is Cleanup Necessary?’ field is set to ‘Yes’ and cannot be changed). But for properties associated to an RLF in Post-Closeout status only, users can update this field to ‘No’ or ‘Unknown’ because some Post-Closeouts RLFs might not require cleanup.

EPA Project Officers

  • TAB Multi-Community Summary Report: A new report column was added to display the ‘Number of Participants.” This number displays only when the type of assistance is ‘Training/Workshop/Event.’
  • Data Admin – Change Work Package Owner: An error in this function has been fixed. It had prevented Data Coordinators from changing work package owners.
  • Justice40 Report Export (Excel): Report totals, the same as displayed on the actual report, can now be viewed at the bottom of each Excel tab page.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.100, was released Friday, December 22, 2023.

Job Training

  • The 2024 Job Training Grant Awards were announced on December 8, 2023, 10 AM Eastern. Fourteen grants were awarded this year. If you’d like to view them, click the link: Brownfields Grant Fact Sheet Search.

Cooperative Agreement Recipients (CARs)

  • New ‘Media’ option was added to the Property Profile Form (PPF): a new media option was added to the ‘Contaminants & Media Affected Information’ section of the PPF, Part 2. It is ‘Soil Gas’. Soil gas is defined as the gas present underground in the pore spaces between soil particles. Soil gas sample as are used to characterize chemical concentrations in the soil.

CARs and EPA Project Officers

  • Quarterly Report (QR) for Cleanup Cooperative Agreements (CAs): several small format and ‘fine-tuning’ improvements were completed to the Cleanup QR. For folks with Cleanup CAs, your first FY24 QR is due January 31st, and it will be using the new report format. If you’ve previously submitted QRs for your CA, the cumulative data from older reports will appear on your new FY24 report for updating (project progress tasks, budget data, property specific dates, etc.).

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.090, was released Monday, December 4, 2023.

Cooperative Agreement Recipients (CARs) and EPA Project Officers

  • Quarterly Report (QR) for Cleanup Cooperative Agreements (CAs): This QR has been redesigned to better address the Terms & Conditions that specify reporting requirements for Cleanup CAs. A team of EPA Regional members collaborated to ensure the new QR works for all 10 regions. New grantees should plan to submit their cleanup QRs through ACRES. Note that if you previously submitted QRs, the information from your last QR will be transferred to the new report format starting with the FY24 Quarter 1 report (no need to reenter data that carries over).

The major changes include (by QR tab):

    • Project Progress tab – users can create their own list of approved tasks to document project progress (previously 5 tasks appeared in the task table). Each approved task line has new fields to collect data for: funding sources, funding expended this quarter and funding expended to date (the latter is calculated by ACRES). In addition, the text boxes that previously appeared on the bottom of this tab have been removed.
    • Budget Summary tab – very similar to the previous version. If this is a first QR for your CA, you can create your own list of expense categories (previously 7 expenses appeared in the table). There is now an optional data table to collect the breakdown of administrative costs (reference your EPA workplan to see if you need to report this).
    • Property Specific Information tab – the data collected is the same as before, but a new feature has been added to help display only the associated properties you’d like to update this quarter. If there is only one associated property, it appears automatically. If there are multiple properties, you can select one or many or all properties to be updated. To use this feature, click the ‘Select Property’ button, select properties to update from the drop-down list, and then click the ‘Show Properties’ button.
    • Subaward Monitoring tab – this is a new tab and is applicable to CAs that have a subaward. If your CA has a subaward, click the ‘Yes’ button, otherwise you can skip this tab. If you clicked ‘yes’, you’ll be able to enter the subaward work summaries in appropriate text boxes. Note that multiple subawards can be entered.
    • Overall CA Progress tab – this tab has 4 sections.
      • The first is a table that will display the CA accomplishments approved this quarter and approved to date. This information is extracted from ACRES and is for your information.
      • The second contains a new data table for Sufficient Progress. There are 5 progress activities to select from and a field for entering the date the activity was completed.
      • The third contains 4 text areas to collect information on the overall progress of the CA.
      • Last, you can now add attachments to your QR. These will also be viewable from the ‘Manage Quarterly Reports’ page. The instructions for Attachments state: Upload attachments that pertain to your quarterly report. Acceptable formats include .pdf, .xls or .xlsx. Attachments will be viewable in the Previous Quarterly Reports (QRs) column of the Manage QRs page. Please do not upload site-specific reports, such as QAPs, Phase I or II Reports, etc. If an item is too large to upload, please email it to your Project Officer.
    • Review & Submit tab – this tab is unchanged. It displays a summary of all other QR tabs. Note that there is a ‘Submit for Review’ button at the bottom of the page. Click the button after all QR information has been entered/reviewed and is ready for the Project Officer. There is also a ‘Print Quarterly Report’ button at the bottom of the page which allows you to create a PDF of the report to save or share.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.070, was released Monday, August 28, 2023. 

Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) Users

  • TAB Community Report: the filters for the ‘County’ and ‘Congressional District’ (CD) fields have been updated to use drop-down lists for selecting options. This change makes it easier to find and select county and/or CD options.

Program Activity Levels (PALs) Users

  • Previous Reports available to view: A new column for ‘Previous Reports’ is available to both CAR and EPA users. For CARs, the column appears on the PALs Reports to Complete page. For EPA users, the column appears on both the Review PALs Reports and the View All PALs Reports pages. To view a previously submitted report, click the associated ‘View’ link in the column. The link provides access to a PDF for each selected report. This feature was suggested by a CAR user as a tool to help ensure accurate data entry on subsequent reporting.

EPA Users

  • Regional Justice40 Summary Report: An issue with the ‘Funding Type’ filter has been fixed so it correctly filters for all 3 options: only BIL funding, only Regular funding, or All funding.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.060, was released Monday, July 24, 2023.

 Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) Users

  • Manage TAB Communities page: The page displays a new column for State. This was requested by a TAB user and will be beneficial to users working with multiple states. Also, a default sort sequence was added to the page so when opened, the data will be in order by Region first, then State (within Region), and then Community Name (within State).
  • TAB Community Home/Details page: Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST) data was added for communities that are located in a disadvantaged census tract(s). A link to ‘Show Details’ appears next to the ‘Census Tract(s) Identified for this Community’ field if a community is in a disadvantaged census tract. Click the link to view its burden thresholds and the associated socioeconomic thresholds.
  • TAB Community records: All existing TAB communities with a previous climate change selection of ‘Other: Unknown’ have had the field changed to ‘Unknown at this time.’ This change affects the communities entered by a single TAB provider and corrects a Climate Change Report issue.

Technical Assistance (TA) Users

 Create new TA Projects - HQ reviewers now have data entry capability to create new TA projects. This has been provided so that some TA projects from last year can be entered into ACRES.

 EPA Users

  • Program Accomplishment Report PAR): Executing this report for JT data now reports final accomplishment data only. It previously included draft data.
  • Climate Change Summary Report: A new report column has been added after the Climate FY column and is titled ‘Date Climate Change Action Counted.’ The help text defines it as: When a user first selects any climate change activity, ACRES will record that date as the one in which the climate change action is counted for the corresponding site or project. Each property, TA Project or TAB Community will only have one date in which the climate change action is counted towards Agency Climate Accomplishments. The Climate FY is determined from this date.

RLF Cooperative Agreement Recipients and EPA Project Officers

  • Update Program Income Balance form (for Post-Closeout RLF CAs): A link to display a sample Post-Closeout Report has been added to the ‘Additional Resources’ section at the top right section of the form. Click the link and the sample report (PDF) displays in a new tab.

ALL Users 

  • Cooperative Agreement (CA) Detail page: Towards the top of the CA Detail page, the ‘Properties Addressed by this Cooperative Agreement’ section displays an edit button for each associated property. Simply click the ‘Edit Data’ button to navigate to the Property Profile Form and begin data entry. Previously, a similar button displayed in the CA’s assessment, cleanup and redevelopment sections resulting in a LOT of links for complicated CAs. This simplification allows the CA page to fit better on a screen and is easier to navigate.

 We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.040, was released Tuesday, May 30, 2023.

All Users

  • ACRES can provide property reporting based upon congressional districts. An example of this is a project officer using the Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) to identify cleanup accomplishments in one of their region’s specific congressional districts. This month the congressional districts in ACRES have been updated for the 118th Congress of the United States (in effect January 2023 – January 2025) to ensure ACRES remains very accurate.

Technical Assistance (TA) Users

  • The TA Project Details page now displays additional details for census tracts. If a TA community is located in a census tract identified as disadvantaged, a new link appears to provide a list of associated burden and socioeconomic thresholds. The threshold information is obtained from the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST). To view the information, click the ‘+ Show Details’ link located next to the census tract field. The link only appears if the tract is identified as disadvantaged.
  • The TA Details page has a new link at the top of the page to ‘Edit Project Info’. The link will reroute users to the data entry page, saving them several steps so they can immediately edit data. This was a suggestion from one of our TA users.

Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) Users

  • A new Assistance Type option is available on page 2 of the TAB community data entry form. The option, ‘Customized tool/material development,’ is available from the Assistance Type drop down list.

RLF Cooperative Agreement Recipients and EPA Project Officers

  • A link to the ‘RLF Form and Instructions (PDF)’ has been added to the Update Program Income Balance page. The link can be found at the top of the page under the ‘Additional Resources’ section. It navigates to a PDF copy of the form, a comprehensive overview of this RLF function, and detailed instructions for data entry

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.030, was released Friday, April 28, 2023.

ICR 2023 Changes – includes PPF and RLF Updates

Every 3 years ACRES data entry pages are evaluated and reviewed for improvements and updates under an Information Change Request (ICR). The 2023 ICR was approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on 03/31/2023 and its associated changes are included in this release. Additional help text has been added for many of the affected data fields.

Cooperative Agreement Recipients – Property Profile Form

Improvements to the PPF include:

  • Page 1
    • State & Tribal BF/Voluntary Response Program Information (optional field) – for properties enrolled in the program, the user is prompted to enter the Program Name and ID Number. The ID number can be used to look up/validate the program name by clicking the ‘Validate State/Tribal ID’ button.
  • Page 2
    • Environmental Site Reuse Planning and Assessment Information section – a new activity option, ‘Site Reuse Planning,’ has been added to the assessment information table. It is available at the bottom of the Activity drop-down list which also contains Phase I Assessment, Phase II Assessment, Cleanup Planning, and Supplemental Assessment.
    • Contaminants – a new column has been added to the Contaminants table for those that are ‘Found Below Actionable Level.’ Click the checkboxes to select as many contaminant classes as are applicable. The column previously titled ‘Found’ has been renamed to ‘Found Above Actionable Levels.’ For a specific contaminant, users can select only one of these 2 columns as they are mutually exclusive. Help text is provided for each column.
    • New sections have been added to the PPF to collect Climate Adaptation and Mitigation information. The sections can be found under Assessments, Cleanups, and Redevelopment. Each new section has unique strategies to select from and explanatory text for each strategy. There is also an option for not applicable (‘N/A’).
      • Planning or Assessment – click the checkbox to select as many strategies as are applicable. There are 5 options and an ‘other’ box where a new strategy can be entered.
      • Demolition or Cleanup – select from the 4 options, including as many as are applicable. If a strategy is not in the list, add it using the ‘other’ box.
      • Redevelopment (actually on Page 3) - there are 4 strategies to select from and also an ‘other’ box for including a strategy not in the list.

RLF Cooperative Agreement Recipients – Additional PPF Changes

As a result of an RLF audit that identified important information missing in ACRES, a redesign of RLF reporting has been completed, to include the cleanup funding section. This is part of the 2023 ICR. There are many new help text icons for the RLF funding fields. Note that data entry fields vary based upon whether the RLF grant is in open, closed, or post-closeout status.

  • Open grant [operating under a Cooperative Agreement (CA)]:
    • The single cleanup funding table has been replaced by 3 funding tables that collect information for:
      • Loans – enter total loan amount, signed date, anticipated repayment start/end dates, identify the funding by source categories [EPA funds, Cost Share and/or Program Income (PI)], and include loan discount information. All data fields are required when loan funding is applicable.
      • Subgrants – enter the subgrant funding amount, the date signed and identify the funding by source categories (EPA funds, Cost Share and/or PI). All data fields are required when subgrant funding is applicable.
      • Leveraged – select a funding source and enter the funding amount. Leveraged funding is optional.
  • Closed grant (CA has ended with no existing or expected program income):
    • Previously entered funding data displays in the 3 funding tables used for Open CAs, but the user is only able to add/update Leveraged Funding.
  • Post-closeout grant [operating under a Closeout Agreement (COA)]:
    • A new assessment ‘Source of Funding’ option has been added for post-closeout RLFs only.
      • The option is ‘Post Closeout Program Income.’
      • This funding is treated as EPA funding and can be used to help an RLF property achieve an assessment accomplishment.
    • The former cleanup funding table has been replaced by 4 funding tables that collect information for:
      • Loans – enter total loan amount, signed date, anticipated repayment start/end dates, the funding source defaults to ‘Program Income’ which cannot be changed, and include loan discount information. All data fields are required when loan funding is applicable.
      • Subgrants – enter the subgrant funding amount, the date signed and the funding source defaults to ‘Program Income’ which cannot be changed. All data fields are required when subgrant funding is applicable.
      • Direct Cleanup – enter the funding amount. The funding source defaults to ‘Program Income’ which cannot be changed. Direct cleanup is unique to a post-closeout RLF operating under an FY22 COA.
      • Leveraged – select a funding source and enter the funding amount. Leveraged funding is optional.

RLF Cooperative Agreement Recipients and EPA Project Officers

Update Program Income Balance data entry page – also a part of the ICR 2023, this new data will be entered quarterly for open RLF grants, and annually (in October with information as of Sept 30th) for post-closeout RLF grants. For closed RLF grants, the information won’t change over time (i.e., PI Balance must remain $0 with no additional PI expected). Use the new ‘Update PI Balance Info’ button on the RLF Home page to access the data entry page. This new function creates a work package which goes through the PO and HQ review processes.

  • Open and Closed grants – enter PI balance, the date entered, and select either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in response to the prompt ‘Is additional PI expected?’
  • Post-closeout grants - enter total Post-Closeout Program Income (PCPI), committed PCPI, uncommitted PCPI, the date entered, PCPI earned in the last 12 months, PCPI spent in the last 12 months, select either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in response to the prompt ‘Is additional PI expected?’, enter the submission date for latest Post-Closeout Report, and select either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in response to the prompt ‘Is a Post-Closeout Report still required?’.

DOCUMENTATION

All user guides, instructions, and recorded training sessions affected by the ICR changes have been updated. They are available on the EPA ACRES website.

State and Tribal Users

Properties associated with a State/Tribal CA previously defaulted to ‘cleanup is required.’ The default has been removed, so when a CAR creates a new property associated with a State/Tribal CA, this field is blank. The user can determine whether cleanup is required. This ACRES update was requested by several CARs and POs who were finding properties with completed assessments that did not need cleanup. The change allows this type of property to count as an assessment accomplishment and potential Ready for Anticipated Use (RAU), both important measures in ACRES.

EPA and HQ Users

  • Climate Change Summary Report

A new report has been released for listing Climate Change information. It is available from the ‘Reports Center’ card on your home page, or from the ‘Reports’ drop-down menu. Climate Change data is being captured for Technical Assistance (TA) projects, Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) communities, and this month we begin to capture for ACRES properties. The report has extensive filtering options that allow the user to select by location (region, state, county, and/or congressional district), select by climate strategy types, climate change measures, climate FY, Justice40, funding type and several additional CA options. The filtered results provide 4 tabs with unique data. The first tab, Summary, provides a number of and percentage of total properties/communities/projects that contain climate strategies. The second tab, Properties, provides a detailed list of all properties that contain climate measure data and which meet the user’s filter selections. Similarly, the TAB Communities and TA Projects tabs provide detailed information for each community or project that have associated climate measures and which meet the filter selections. The bottom of each tab listing displays the number of important fields (examples: # properties, # communities, # associated to disadvantaged census tracts, # BIL-funded, etc.) This report can be exported to Excel so it can be saved, shared and printed.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.020, was released Wednesday, April 5, 2023.

EPA and HQ Users

Technical Assistance (TA) Summary Report

  • A new report has been released for listing TA project information. The report has extensive filtering options that allow the user to select by location (region, state, county, and/or congressional district), select by Justice40, TA funding type, Brownfield funding type, recipient type, project status, activities performed, milestone type and several additional options. The user can personalize the fields displayed on the report by using the ‘Add or Remove Table Columns’ button. Each project name listed on the report is a link that opens the associated Project Details page. The bottom of the report lists the number of BIL funded projects, the number of unique recipient names, the number of projects and the total cost incurred. And the report can be exported in Excel so it can be saved, shared and printed.

Technical Assistance for Brownfields (TAB) Community Summary Report

  • A new report has been released for use in listing TAB community information. Similar to the TA Summary Report, this report has extensive filtering options that allow the user to select by TAB provider, by location (region, state, county, and/or congressional district), to select by community type, funding type, Justice40, assistance type, FY(s) for Assistance, and work package status. Each community name listed in the filtered results is a link that opens the community Details page. The bottom of the report lists the number of communities on the report, the number BIL funded communities, and the number of communities that qualify for Justice40. The report can be exported in Excel so it can be saved, shared and printed.

Technical Assistance for Brownfields (TAB) Multi-Community Summary Report

  • A new report has been released that lists TAB multi-community information. This report has filtering options that allow the user to select by TAB provider, assistance type, TAB provider’s role, FY(s) for assistance, funding type, applicable regions, and work package status. Each project name listed on the filtered results is a link that opens the associated project Details page. The bottom of the report lists the number of projects on the report and the number of BIL funded communities. The report can be exported in Excel so it can be saved, shared and printed.

Technical Assistance (TA) and Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) Users

TA and TAB Data Entry Forms

  • The Congressional District (CD) has been added as a field to both the TA project and the TAB community data entry forms. The CD is added automatically when the user enters location information and it is based on the ZIP code. Note that the TAB Multi-community projects do not have sufficient location information for a CD.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.04.010, was released Friday, March 3, 2023.

All Users

Cooperative Agreement (CA) Detail Page

  • A new column has been added to the CA Detail page in the ‘Properties Addressed by this Cooperative Agreement’ section. The column displays the Property ID number and is located to the right of the Property Name column. It provides another way to identify properties associated to the CA at a quick glance. This was a request from one of our CAR users.

Quarterly Report (QR) for RLF Cooperative Agreements

  • A new funding expense category for ‘Indirect Costs’ has been added to the RLF QRs. It can be found on the Funds Expended tab, located between the ‘Contractual’ and ‘Other’ expense categories. A number of CARs have been asking for a place to report indirect costs. 

Property Profile Form (PPF) Review and Submit Page - Contaminants

  • When a user selects ‘Other Metals’ in the Contaminants section, the selected metals will display grouped together (and indented) on the Review and Submit screen. Previously listed individually and in random order, the new display more clearly shows these contaminants as additional metals found. This new format will also appear on the Property Detail page in the near future.

Email Notification for Property Disassociation

  • There was an error in the email notification for property disassociation. CARs who disassociated a property were being notified that the property had been deleted instead of disassociated. This error has been fixed.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.03.060 – v 6.03.070, was released Wednesday, February 1, 2023.

Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) Grant Users    **NEW**

  • Once registered for ACRES, TAB grant users will be able to log into the system and begin entering information for both TAB Communities and TAB Multi-Community Projects. A TAB user’s Home page has only 4 cards on the page. The card used most often is the ‘Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) – Grant Funding’ which contains a link to open existing TAB work packages and links to manage/add new TAB communities and multi-community projects. 

Technical Assistance (TA) – Contract Funding Users          **NEW**

  • Similar to TAB users, TA users must register for ACRES and will then be able to log into the system to enter information for their TA projects. A TA user’s Home page contains only 3 cards on the page. The most frequently used card is the ‘Technical Assistance (TA) – Contract Funding’ card. It contains a link to open existing TA work packages and a second link to manage/add new TA projects.  

All Users

Property Home page

  • If a property is located in a census tract considered disadvantaged per the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), this information is displayed under the census tract field. New this month, details from CEJST can be displayed on the Property Home page by clicking the ‘+ View details’ link located under the census tract notification. The details for each burden threshold crossed include the main burden category (Climate Change, Energy, Health, Housing, Legacy Pollution, Transportation, Water & Wastewater); name of the burden threshold; description of the burden threshold; burden rate captured; and associated socioeconomic thresholds.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, for v 6.03.030 – v 6.03.050, was released Wednesday, November 30, 2022.

All Users

  • Funding for the new 2022 Cooperative Agreements (CAs) is in place. The new CAs were added to the ACRES database November 2022. Users can access ACRES to associate to their new CAs, and then add/update properties, enter job training information, and produce Quarterly Reports.

Property Home page

  • The census tract for each property now displays in the Property Details section (located just under the property’s county).
  • If the property is located in a census tract that is considered disadvantaged per the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, this will be displayed under the census tract field.

Training Presentations

  • Training presentations, available for viewing from the EPA ACRES web page, have been updated. These include Training for Project Officers, Job Training for Project Officers, Training for New Grantees and Training for Experienced Grantees.

EPA Users

  • PAR
    • Two new report filters have been added in the ‘Optional Selections’ section. The first provides the ability to filter for a specific funding type (options are: All funding types, Regular Brownfields funding, BIL, or ARRA). The second allows users to filter by Justice40 (options are: Properties identified as Disadvantaged, Properties not identified as Disadvantaged, and Unknown). The identification of disadvantaged census tracts/properties is based on the CEQ’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool.
  • Regional Cooperative Agreement (CA) Summary Report
    • The report has been updated so that it only displays the CA Type tabs selected by the user. For example, if you only want to see assessment and cleanup CAs on your report, and you select these 2 types on the filter, the report results will have 3 tabs: one for a summary of the selected CA types, a second for cleanups, and a third for assessments. Previously there was a tab for all CA types, but each type that was not specifically selected for reporting displayed a blank screen.

Job Training Users

  • Funding for the new 2022 Cooperative Agreements (CAs) is in place. The new CAs were added to the ACRES database November 2022. Users can access ACRES to associate to their new CAs and enter job training information.
  • Three new fields have been added to the Job Training Reporting Form. The first 2 are located at the top of the Performance Measures Information section. The third is located at the bottom of the form. Help text is available for the first 2 fields. The fields are:
    1. Number of Training Cohorts Completed (this field collects the cohort end date(s))
    2. Number of participants entering registered apprenticeships, labor management partnerships or other workforce training programs
    3. Success Stories (Optional)

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, v 6.03.010, was released Thursday, July 28, 2022.

All Users

  • For security, all EPA applications time out after 15 minutes of inactivity. ACRES cannot extend this time period to provide users with more data entry time (we have tried!). We have added a pop-up warning on your ACRES screen which will display after 13 minutes of inactivity. It reminds users to SAVE their data and then proceed with data entry/processing. It is a good habit to develop for ALL applications you use – save often so you don’t lose data.

EPA Users

  • Regional Cooperative Agreement (CA) Summary Report
    • The report has been updated so that CA Type tabs on the report results page display only for the CA Types selected. For example, if you only want to see assessment and cleanup CAs on your report, and you select these 2 types on the filter, the report results will only have 3 tabs: one for a summary of the selected CA types, a second for cleanups, and a third for assessments. Previously there was a tab for all other CA types as well but each reported no data.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, v 6.03.000, was released Thursday, June 30, 2022.

Grant Fact Sheet Users

  • A reporting filter has been added to the GFS Search page to allow users to search and view the BIL funded grants. Note that by default both regular and BIL grants will be displayed on the search results page, effective for FY22 and future grants. The new filter is titled ‘Brownfields Funding Type’ and is located under the ‘Filter Your Results’ section. This filter also includes an option for ARRA grants which were released only in 2009. (The previous ARRA filter located under the Announcement Year has been removed.)

A new column has also been added to the search results page titled ‘Special Funding Type’ that will display ‘BIL’ for BIL grants and ‘ARRA’ for ARRA grants. A blank in the column indicates the grant is a ‘regular’ MARC grant. Also included is a help icon, added to both the new column and the new filter, that links to EPA sites which discuss BIL and ARRA.  

EPA Users

  • PAR
    • The PAR has been updated so that when a user clicks the ‘Back to PAR Filters’ button, the previous PAR filter options are retained.
    • For Job Training data, a link has been added to each JT CA Name on the report so POs can easily navigate to the associated JT Home page.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES, v 6.02.130, was released Tuesday, May 24, 2022.

ALL Users

  • The Reports drop down menu has new sub-headings, particularly helpful if you have a number of report options. Your reports will be grouped by Management Reports, Quarterly Reports, and State/Tribal Reports as applicable to your user role. They are the same reports, but easier to find!

TBA Users

  • When a new/updated property is associated to your TBA, ACRES checks to verify that the property is not a duplicate. The verification process requires that you select a location filter. If you opt for the ‘State’ filter, ACRES will prompt you for the TBA’s state – it is only option available. Example: if you want to add a property to ‘R10 TBA – Alaska (STAG Funded)’ – only Alaska displays in the ‘Property State’ drop down. Previously, the state filter included a number of TBA states which was confusing to some.

EPA Users

  • Regional Cooperative Agreement Summary Report

For users with access to multiple regions, the Region column now displays by default (it’s the first column in the report). Previously to display the regions on the report, you needed to select the field using the ‘Add or Remove Table Columns.’ Users that have access to only their own region (the majority of EPA users) will not see the Region column unless they opt to add it to the report.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

An updated version of ACRES was released Friday, April 29, 2022. This covers 2 versions (6.02.110 and 6.02.120).

ALL Users

  • A new ACRES Bulletin was released in April that features a great success story in Minnesota.  

TBA Users

  • In preparation for tracking the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) funding, a new TBA designation has been added to ACRES. Similar to the STAG, ARRA, and Pre-law, you will find new TBAs with a BIL designation for each state and territory. Properties can be added to the TBA BILs beginning this summer.

EPA Users

  • Regional Performance Report redesign
    • Redesigned and renamed, the new Regional Cooperative Agreement (CA) Summary Report is a fancy report now! The old report chunked through a great deal of data so was slow and cumbersome. The new report is fast to load and allows you to select the data you need.  When you open the report, you have a number of helpful filter options available so you can tailor the report to meet your requirements. You must select at least one filter option and then click the ‘Apply Filters’ button. Note that you can produce a report for specific Congressional Districts, specific project officers, specific CA statuses and other fields. The report will display the most commonly used CA fields (which will vary for Job Training, AWP, and Showcase Community CAs). Additional report fields can be added (and you can hide fields you do not need) by using the ‘Add or Remove Table Columns’ button in the Filter Results section. The report also features column totals for funding and accomplishment counts.
  • PAR
    • A ‘Tribal Data’ filter has been added to the PAR and can be found under Section 4 - Optional Selections. This filter replaces the ‘Tribal Only’ option that used to be available under the ‘Select CA Type -> Section 128(a) State/Tribal Cooperative Agreements’ in Section 1. Most tribal data is entered under Section 128(a) State/Tribal Cooperative Agreements. However, there are properties that are addressed under Cleanup, Assessment, and other CA types. Selecting the ‘Tribal Data Only’ filter will provide accomplishment counts and details for properties that are strictly Tribal.
  • PALs
    • Improvements have been made to the ‘View All Annual PALs Forms’ which is available on your State and Tribal Reports card. Previously this report listed the PALs forms from all ten regions when the page opened. It now lists only the PALs forms in your own region (a bit more manageable). At the top of the report are two new filter options that allow you to 1) select other regions and 2) select a specific state(s) within any of the regions.  

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES was released Friday, February 25, 2022. This release covers 3 versions (6.02.080, 6.02.090, 6.02.100) due to a 2-month EPA ‘code freeze’. The freeze  restricted modifications to production code until mid-February.

ALL Users

  • The ‘Advanced Search’ results page has a new record count at the bottom of the results table. For example, if there are 100 properties reported and you opt for 25 entries displayed per page, the count will display ‘Showing 1 to 25 of 100 entries’. Click the page number to the right to move to the next 25 entries, and the count will display ‘Showing 26 to 50 of 100 entries’, etc.

CAR Users

  • ‘Add a New CA’ Function Update
    • To add a new CA to their account, CARs enter the 8-digit CA number to identify their CA on the ‘Add Cooperative Agreement’ screen. Previously, they were also prompted to enter the State as additional verification. The state prompt has been removed because our Tribal CAs are associated to a sovereign nation, and not simply a state.
  • Property Profile Form (PPF) Page 1
    • The ‘County’ field on the PPF is now based on the property Zip code location. ACRES will auto fill this field for users as there have been some pretty creative (and incorrect) county names added in the past. Note that ‘County’ will no longer be an editable field and the incorrect counties will be fixed.  New ACRES reporting features that filter by county made this change necessary.

EPA Users

  • Review Work Packages
    • When opening the Review Work Packages screen, many of our POs like to begin their review session starting with the oldest work packages. A PO can click the sort icon on the 'Status Since' column to reorder work packages by oldest first.  ACRES now retains the selected sort order for the entire review session.  After you complete a work package review, your remaining work packages will still be listed in order by status since date. This was a request from one of our POs – thank you for suggesting this.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

 A new version of ACRES, v 6.02.070, was released Wednesday, November 24, 2021

 ALL Users

  • A new report, the State Brownfields and Voluntary Response Programs Report, is now publicly available. It provides a concise, user-friendly synopsis of the programs and tools available to address brownfield sites in each of the 50 states, D.C., and the U.S. Territories. Some CARs and EPA staff will have annual update responsibilities in ACRES beginning this year. These folks will have an updated card on their ACRES home page (see details below for each user type). For all others, click this link to view the public reports: State Brownfields and Voluntary Response Programs
  •  The Property Home page has been updated to display associated CAs in a table directly below the property location section. CAs previously displayed in a narrow column at the top right of the Property home page. The new layout allows CA info to be read more easily and when multiple CAs are associated, the right portion of the screen no longer displays a chunk of white space.

CAR Users

·      128(a) State and Tribal Users

o   If you are associated to an active 128(a) CA, a new card titled ‘STATE & TRIBAL REPORTS’ will display on your home page. When there is a number next to the ‘State Reports to Review’ link, please click the link, open up your State report, review the information in the report (update where needed) and then submit to your Project Officer. EPA would like each State report to be reviewed annually (at the beginning of each fiscal year). This year we’re asking to have the information reviewed and submitted by December 17th.

EPA Users

·      POs for active 128(a) State and Tribal CAs

o  If you are associated to an active 128(a) CA, a new card titled ‘STATE & TRIBAL REPORTS’ will display on your home page. When a CAR has submitted an updated state report for your review, a number displays next to the ‘State Reports to Review’ link. Click the link, open up the State report, review the report and then submit to HQ. The POs should have these submitted by mid-January (CARs should send to POs by December 17th).

·      PAR Updates

o  Column 3 on the report’s filter selection page has been renamed ‘Select Location’. Since most folks use the PAR to check their regional or state accomplishments, the first option has been simplified to filter only by Region(s) and/or State(s).

o  The option for ‘Congressional District’ has been moved to the new ‘Advanced Selections’ option (still under Column 3), located just under the Region/State selection drop down. First narrow your location search by selecting a region(s) and/or state(s). Next, click the link for ‘Advanced Selections’, click the radio button for ‘Include Congressional Districts’ and click inside the text box. All Congressional districts in your selected region(s)/state(s) appear in a drop down. Click a name to select a district; depress the <ctrl> key to select more than one at a time from the drop down.

o  PAR has a new filter option for ‘County’, also available under ‘Advanced Selections’. First narrow your location search by selecting a region(s) and/or state(s). To filter by county, click the link for ‘Advanced Selections’, click the radio button for ‘Include Counties’ and click inside the text box. All counties in your selected region(s)/state(s) appear in a drop down. Click a name to select a county; depress the <ctrl> key to select more than one at a time from the drop down.

·      PALs

o  All EPA users will have read-only access to the Annual PALs Forms (some EPA users will also have Review access). From your Home page, click the ‘View Annual PALs Forms’ link either from the Reports menu drop down or on your ‘STATE AND TRIBAL REPORTS’ card.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES, v 6.02.060, was released Thursday, October 28, 2021

CAR Users

  • Edit Property
    • The step process graphic at the top of the screen has been updated so it is both easier to read and use. The step you are currently working on (related to the Property Profile Page (PPF)) displays prominently at the top of the page. To move to another PPF page, you can click either the step number or step title (Ex. Step 3 will open the Property Profile Form Part III).
  • Add New Property
    • Several format improvements were completed to the Add New Property function. The ‘Add’ page has additional text to make the use of filters and buttons function clearer.
  • Quarterly Reports (QR)
    • When entering data on the QR, the data will be automatically saved when moving between tabs. Previously, users had to click the Save button at the bottom of the screens to save data.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES, v 6.02.050, was released Wednesday, September 29, 2021

ALL Users

  • Cooperative Agreement (CA) Home Page – assessment counts table
    • An assessment counts table has been added to the top of the Assessment section. It lists the number of Phase I, Phase II, Cleanup Planning, and Supplemental assessments for the CA. This was added so that when new grant applications are released each year, past grantees can easily find this information to give to their Project Officers (POs) - to tell the POs about their outputs from past grants. This will be a useful tool so that POs and CARs can easily identify the number of sites that were worked on.
  • Program Activity Levels (PALs) Reporting
    • Effective October 1st, there will be a workflow for the FY21 PALs reporting. CARs will enter their PALs information and submit to their EPA PO for review. The PO will review the PALs form, update if applicable and submit to Headquarters for a final approval. Specifics for CARs and POs can be found below.
  • Quarterly Reports (QRs) – Funds Expended Tab
    • An infrequently used table, the Task Based Funding Table, has been removed from new reporting. Task based funding recorded for past QRs will continue to be shown on the PDF version of the QR.

CAR Users

  • PALs Reporting
    • If you are associated with an open Section 128(a) State/Tribal CA, a new card for ‘Program Activity Levels’ will appear on your Home Page. The card will display the number of your State/Tribal CAs that need an annual PALs form filled out and submitted. You can access the PALs forms by clicking the ‘PALs Forms to Complete’ link. This will navigate to a list of your applicable CAs. Click the ‘Enter FY21’ link associated to each CA and enter your data into the 8 fields on the form. Then click the ‘Submit Data to PO’ to complete your work. Once submitted, you can view your PALs data at any time but can no longer update it.
    • Your FY21 PALs forms are due to your PO by December 15th.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • PALs Reporting
    • If you are the assigned Reviewer for an open Section 128(a) State/Tribal CA, a new card for ‘Program Activity Levels’ will appear on your Home Page. The card will display the number of your State/Tribal CAs that have a PALs report awaiting your review/approval. Click the ‘PALs Forms to Review’ link to access these. Click the ‘Review FY21 PALs Data’ link associated to each CA, check the data entered and update any of the data fields if needed. Click the ‘Approve Data for HQ Review’ button to complete your work. Once submitted, you have the option to view the data at any time but can no longer update it.
    • The FY21 PALs forms are due to HQ by January 15, 2022.
  • My Projects, My Regional Cooperative Agreements, and TBA Properties pages
    • Pagination has been added to these pages, a big help especially when a PO has many projects or CAs. At the top of each of these pages, EPA users can select how many report lines to display on a page (options are 10, 25, 50, 100). At the bottom of the pages, the total number of report lines is displayed. There is also a page selection bar that lets you select the first page, last page, or any page in between.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES, v 6.02.040, was released Thursday, September 2, 2021  

ALL Users

  • Submission Archive
    • The submission archive has been redesigned to provide more information including a useful ‘snapshot’ that displays the latest data added to ACRES. The archive is available for both Cooperative Agreements (CA) and for properties.
    • The CA version lists the basic CA information (name, number, status, type, announce year) and has a section for each associated property. Each property section displays work package flow including the date/time, owner role, owner name, and the status of each step. Wherever a work package is approved, a ‘snapshot’ link is available. Click the link and you can basically see the ‘review & submit’ page where new/updated fields are highlighted, and the old field values are displayed in an adjacent column.
    • Similarly, the property version lists basic property info (name, ID, and address) and has a section for the work packages performed under each associated CA (there may be only one or many). It contains the same work package flow (and snapshots) as the CA.
    • The submission archive links are available at the top of the CA and Property Home pages.
  • ACRES has a new Footer!
    • A new footer displays at the bottom of every ACRES page. It provides access to General Information (via a link to EPA’s ‘Brownfields Grantee Reporting using ACRES’), help resources, and provides information on browser compatibility and uploads. Several of the icons previously located at the top right corner of the ACRES page (near the logout button) have been replaced by a ‘Help’ link. Click the link and a pop up provides the same useful information included in the footer.
  • Quick Search
    • When using the Quick Search function for CAs, users can enter either the 8-digit CA number or the full 10 digits (which includes the program code – BF, JT, RP, etc.). Previously all 10 digits were required for search results.
  • CA Home Page – link to Grant Fact Sheet updated
    • The link to ‘View CA Fact Sheet’ now navigates to the new Grant Fact Sheet Search page (as opposed to the old page 😊). It currently displays all of this year’s grant announcements so use the filters to quickly navigate to your CA’s grant.  In the near future, the link will more closely match the grant to the CA (based on year, name, location, grant type).

CAR Users 

  • Remove a CA from your List
    • Have you ever associated the wrong CA to your account and wondered how to remove it? A new column has been added to the ‘My Cooperative Agreements’ page. It is labeled ‘Additional Actions’ and contains a link to remove a CA from your list. Click the link and you’ll be asked to confirm the removal. Once confirmed the CA no longer appears on your list. If you added property data to the wrong CA and need to have it transferred to the correct CA before removing the incorrect one, the Help Desk can assist you.  NOTE: you cannot remove a CA if you have an associated open work package or open quarterly report. Complete the work package or quarterly report, and the ‘remove’ link will appear in your column.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Data Admin – Search Results page
    • An error on the search results page has been corrected. This page previously displayed an ‘Edit User’ link for the CAR accounts. These CAR links have been removed. Data Admins have the ability to update EPA user information such as contact info and associated CAs, but not CAR user data.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES, v 6.02.030, was released Monday, August 2, 2021

ALL Users

  • Submission Archive
    • A date/time stamp has been added to the submission archive. This allows the work package actions to display in a chronologic order by date/time. Additional improvements to the archive are planned for the near future.
  • Quarterly Reports (QR) – viewing CAs with multiple associated properties
    • To improve viewing the reports of CAs with multiple properties (some of the assessment CAs have many, many associated!), 2 updates have been made to the QR:
      • In the Profile Information section at the top of the page, the Properties Associated field displays only the first 5 properties with an option to display the remaining properties if desired (click the ‘view more’ link). For CAs with many properties, this allows users to see more of the QR data entry fields without having to scroll to the bottom of the page.
      • On the Property Specific Information tab, the Data Element column with the field titles remains a static column. When users scroll right to view more properties, the data element names remain on the page whether looking at the first couple of properties or the last few of the bunch.

CAR Users

  • Cooperative Agreement help
    • Have you ever associated to the wrong CA (off by a number or year??) and wondered how to remove it from your list? From your Home page, click the link for ‘Total Cooperative Agreements’ on your ‘My Account’ card. A list of your associated CAs appears with a new column on the right titled ‘Additional Actions’. Click the ‘Remove CA from My List’ link to disassociate from one of the CAs if applicable. Note that you cannot remove a CA from your list if it has an open Work Package or Quarterly Report. You must complete the Work Package or Quarterly Report, and then the remove link will appear.
  • Empty Quarterly Reports removed
    • Quarterly reports that were started and never updated with any data (no tasking, no funding, and no narratives) are considered ‘empty’. The empty reports associated with closed CAs and from years prior to FY21 have been removed from the database.
  • My Properties page
    • A ‘Show # entries’ feature has been added to the top of the page to allow you to control the number of properties displayed on the page(s). Options are 10, 25, 50 or 100.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Program Accomplishment Report (PAR)
    • The CA Status (options: Open/Closed/Cancelled/RLF Post Closeout) has been added to the reporting tabs of the PAR. The status is displayed in a new column next to the CA Type column. This will help to distinguish which targets were from recent CAs and which came from Headquarters’ data collection effort.
    • Format improvements:
      • The yellow box at the top of the report’s Summary tab has been updated to display only the Filter options used for the current report. Note that these filter options will display at the top of EACH report tab (in case you forget what was selected for the current report).
      • The accomplishment ‘Totals’, previously in the yellow box, now appear at the bottom of the counts table – highlighted in blue and in Bold font – where they make more sense for viewing.   
      • The Ready for Anticipated Use (RAU) tab now contains 2 individual columns for the Acres RAU and Properties RAU. These were previously displayed in a single column. This improves readability of the RAUs and also allows users to sort RAU properties and acres independently.
      • A ‘Return to PAR Filters’ link has been added to the top of all report pages. Clicking this button returns you to the filters page (it does not save your previous selections at this time).
  • Work Package Review and Submit
    • Project officers reviewing CAR work packages have the ability to mark funding activities and funding lines for deletion. The ‘marked for deletion’ function is usually one completed by the CARs, but for cases where there is a duplicate funding/activity or the CAR is no longer working on a project, the PO can make this correction to a work package. This functionality was requested by several of our ACRES project officers.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES including v 6.02.010 and v 6.02.020 was released Monday, June 28, 2021

ALL Users

  • Property Alias Name
    • Are you unsure if a property has an alias name, or know it by the alias name? The Quick Search and Advanced Search functions have been updated to help you easily work with alias names. On the Advanced Search table, a new ‘Alias’ column has been added next to the property name column. Use the filters to reduce the number of properties (for example, only list properties in your city) and then quickly find your alias in the new column. On the Quick Search, the alias name appears next to the property name and property number as in this example:   97531 | 660 West Main St [ALIAS: Morgan’s TV]
  • Advanced Search Updated
    • Filter selections are saved so if you leave the search function to do other work and then return to search again, the selections do not have to be reentered.
  • County Names Added
    • Older properties entered 10 or more years ago were often missing their county names. These names have been added to the property records.
    • The County Name now displays on the Property Home page. It’s located at the top of the page in the Property Details section.

CAR Users

  • Home Page – older work packages highlighted
    • A count of work packages in the same status for 90+ days now displays on the Work Packages card. It’s important to report ACRES information in a timely manner so you’ll see this number whenever you log in (if applicable).  Click the Open Work Packages link for more detail on older work packages.
  • Open Work Packages Page – older work packages highlighted
    • A message now displays in the ‘Status Since’ column to remind users when their work packages have been in the same status for 90+ days. Please try to submit these to your project officer ASAP.
  • Property Deletions
    • When a property is marked for deletion, an email notice will be sent to users associated to the property to notify them of the deletion. The marked property still has to be approved by the EPA project officer, so if you do NOT want the property deleted, notify the project officer ASAP. This new notification is a request from our CAR users.
  • Quarterly Reports
    • Helpful instructions have been added to the top of the Manage Quarterly Reports and Open Quarterly Reports pages. They provide background information on applicable CAs and QR due dates.
    • The Manage Quarterly Reports page has several improvements. A QR work package status has been added to the ‘Previous Quarterly Reports’ column so users will quickly know whether their QR has been approved, is awaiting PO review, or was sent back for clarification. Also, there is an action button change: new QRs will have a green button to ‘Add’ and older unsubmitted QRs will have a blue button to ‘Edit’.
    • Sneaky users have tried using negative funding numbers to fix funding values from previous quarters. It doesn’t work. Negative numbers can no longer be entered. If you have data that needs updating from previous QRs, please contact the ACRES Help Desk for assistance.
  • Quarterly Reports for RLF CAs
    • Funds Expended tab – there is now a single data entry table for Program Income funding. Pre FY2020, CAs sometimes had both hazardous and petroleum funding. However, program income is not designated as strictly hazardous or petroleum, so only one table will be used.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • TBA Work Package Sharing
    • TBA properties are usually entered and updated in ACRES by EPA staff. A few regions are using contractors to manage their TBA data. To help with a review process for these, the ability to ‘share’ TBA work packages has been added. Contract staff can access the share function on the Property Profile Form and opt to share their TBA work packages with EPA staff members (who can then review the work). When they opt to share, contractors can also send an optional email with a status update. Note that either the contractor or EPA staff can submit the work package for final approval. Once a TBA work package is submitted for approval, the sharing is removed (but can be re-added if/when the TBA property is updated again). 
  • EPA Data Admin – Edit User
    • The edit user function has been updated so it is easier to use. Two tabs have been added to the top of the edit user page. One allows for update of user contact information and ACRES access. The second provides for the review and update of user associated CAs.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES v 6.01.180 was released Friday, April 30, 2021

ALL Users

  • New Grant Fact Sheet Search tool
    • The Brownfields Grant Fact Sheet (GFS) Search application has been redesigned. New features were added to make it easier to use.  
      • The search page defaults to display the current year’s GFSs. The ‘Filter Your Results’ options allow you to find grants for specific years, regions, states, grant types, etc. 
      • A new button has been added to the top of the page, ‘Add or Remove Table Columns’, which allows you to easily add/subtract grant funding columns to personalize your display. 
      • A ‘Search’ feature was added to the top right on the GFS Search page which allows you to quickly filter your search results.
      • Grant Recipient names are shown in blue font and underlined to easily identify the name as the link to the GFS. Click any recipient name to view their associated GFS. 
      • Click the ‘View Printable PDF’ button on the grant fact sheet screen to print and/or save the sheet. 
      • The layout of the GFS has also been improved for better readability.
  • Automated emails
    • The automated email function has been restored. ACRES users will receive email notification of work package status changes and of idle work package progress. Using ‘My Preferences’ you can set how often you receive email reminders. Options are immediately, daily, weekly, or monthly.
  • Advanced and Quick Search
    • The search functions now include the property alias name as a searchable field. To use an alias name for a quick search, simply type the name in the quick search text box at the top of any ACRES screen. The name of the property associated to the alias displays in a drop down. To use it in the advanced search, click the ‘Advanced Search’ link, select the filter for ‘Keyword’ and type the alias in the keyword box (and then click the ‘Apply Filter’ button). The name of the property associated to the alias displays in the search results table.
  • Browser support
    • Not sure which browser is compatible with ACRES? A list of supported browsers can be found on the ‘Contact Us’ page. Hint: the most commonly used and supported browsers are included – but Internet Explorer (IE) is not.

CAR Users

  • Property Profile Form (PPF)
    • The funding tables for both cleanup and redevelopment data have been updated. The popup table previously used has been replaced with inline editing. This makes it easier to add and update funding data.
  • Job Training – Leveraged Funding Details
    • Similar to the PPF update, the job training leveraged funding table has also been updated. Adding and updating funding data is now easier. The popup table previously used for data entry/update has been replaced with inline editing. 

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Regional Status Report
    • A filter was added so EPA users can easily view ONLY work packages older than 90 days. To access the filter, click the drop-down arrow on the ‘Status’ field at the top of the report. Select the last option ‘Older than 90 days’. The report refreshes to list only the older work packages. Note that the ‘Export to Excel’ will also list the filtered work packages (> 90 days) when the option is selected – so the list can be printed/shared.
  • Review Work Package
    • A new Pending Accomplishments section has been added to the top of the PPF Review & Submit page. It lists the work package’s pending accomplishments (cleanup, assessment, dollars leveraged, jobs leveraged, ready for anticipated use) for easy reference during review.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES v 6.01.170 was released Wednesday, March 31, 2021

ALL Users

  • Advanced Search Function
    • A new filter option for property ‘County’ has been added to the Advanced Search function. This was requested by one of our regional users to help manage TBA properties by their county location.
  • 2021 EWDJT Grant Fact Sheets
    • The 2021 EWDJT Grant Fact Sheets were posted to the EPA web site on Thursday, March 11, 2021. EPA is selecting 18 organizations to receive a total of $3.3 million in grants for environmental job training programs across the country. Job training and workforce development are an important part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to advance economic opportunities and address environmental justice issues in underserved communities. To view the grant fact sheets, please go to: https://java.epa.gov/acrespub/gfs/

CAR Users

  • Property Profile Form (PPF)
    • CAs awarded in FY20 (and newer) no longer have funding designated as Hazardous or Petroleum. Funding is simply the total funding amount. This change is reflected on the PPF’s Cooperative Agreement Information section which no longer displays the ‘CA Recipient Information’ field (haz/petro/both options) for properties associated to the newer CAs.
  • Quarterly Reports
    • For BCRLF quarterly reports (QR) only, on the Funding Expended tab, Summary of Program Income Funding table, the prior ‘Program Income Balance’ will be carried forward from the previous quarter. This field was previously displaying zero for each new QR.
    • For BCRLF QRs only, on the Property Specific tab the funding amount fields initially are blank so the user can split funding among the properties as appropriate (BCRLF CAs usually have a number of associated properties).   Once the user enters a funding amount it will be displayed on subsequent QRs.
    • Help icons and help text have been added to Cleanup and BCRLF quarterly reports.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • ARRA and Pre-Law Superfund TBAs
    • For both ARRA and Pre-Law Superfund, the Targeted Brownfield Assessments (TBAs) have been split. Previously, associated properties were displayed under a single TBA for each region (several hundred properties for some regions). TBAs have now been subdivided by state and territory for each region. This change makes it easier to locate the properties, gather information by location, and use ACRES reports for statistics by state.
  • PO Home Page
    • The last 2 cards on the home page have been consolidated. Unused functions have been removed, including a link to the Multi-property Spreadsheet (it’s rarely used anymore – contact the Help Desk if you need the link). For Regional Coordinators, the Data Admin card has been moved towards the top of the page.
  • Data Admin – Change Data Reviewer
    • An error in this function has been corrected. It was not displaying the Section 128(a) State/Tribal CAs on the list of regional CAs that can be modified. They are back on the list.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (combined v 6.01.150 and v 6.01.160) was released Tuesday, February 23, 2021

CAR Users

  • Property Profile Form (PPF)
    • Improvements were completed to the section that contains Deletion/ Disassociation, Work Package Sharing, Data Documentation and Submission Notes (located at the top of every PPF page). This area has been updated to improve clarity and function of each box. Each feature displays in a separate box and if any information exists for the function, that fact is noted in the title. Each section is 'collapsed' to save space on the page - click the 'Expand' button to access detailed information.

      • Disassociation – this feature has been improved so, if needed, you can easily correct the CA associated to your property. When you opt to disassociate for the reason of ‘associated to wrong CA’, you can select a different CA from your list (the correct one!) to associate to your property. Previously, this function involved getting PO approval to disassociate and later returning to the property to associate to another CA. 

  • CAR Home Page
    • The last 4 cards on the home page have been consolidated. Unused functions have been removed, including a link to the Multi-property Spreadsheet (it’s rarely used anymore – contact the Help Desk if you need the link). 
  • My Work Packages Page
    • To allow for additional sorting, separate columns were added for ‘CA Type’ and ‘CA Announcement Year’.
  • My Properties Page
    • An Export to Excel function has been added so users can view/print their My Properties information on a spreadsheet. The export button can be found at the top right corner of the page.
  • PALs Report
    • A link to instructions (PDF) has been added to the PALs data entry page. The PDF displays on another tab for ease of use. The link is located at the top right corner of the page. My Work Packages Page

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • PO Home Page
    • A new link has been added to the PO’s ‘Work Packages’ card for access to open work packages that the PO created. This type of work package is created when a PO updates a property associated to one of their closed CAs. The link only displays when there are active, open work packages.
  • Review Work Packages Page
    • To allow for additional sorting and for consistency, separate columns were added for ‘CA Type’ and ‘FY’.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.140) was released Monday, January 4, 2021

CAR Users

  • Quarterly Reports – error fixed 
    • An error on the Quarterly Reports has been corrected. It occurred when users attempted to submit their FY20 quarterly reports. New FY20 grants no longer have a hazardous/petroleum funding designation (funding is now called the total funding amount). Older grants do report the haz/petro funding on the Property Specific tab and this funding change caused an error for FY20 grants. Going forward, for FY20 and newer grants, the Property Specific tab will display an editable data field titled “Total Funding Amount” (cleanup and RLF grants). Older grants will still display data fields for “Hazardous Substance Funding Amount” and “Petroleum Funding Amount”, and the fields are editable.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Regional Status Report - Reviewer Feedback added
    • Project Officers (POs) have asked for a way to see their own feedback on work packages returned for CAR clarification. To provide this, the Regional Status Report has a new “View Feedback” button that allows the PO to quickly view their text where applicable. The button appears under the “Status” column. This will be useful when monitoring open work packages, and especially helpful where some time has passed since the clarification was requested.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.130) was released Tuesday, December 8, 2020

CAR Users

  • Quarterly Reports – Funding tab 
    • The cents in the funding table fields were previously rounded to the nearest dollar. Several users had reported that the rounding resulted in values not always matching totals for other reporting requirements (off by a dollar here and there) which caused frustration. Funding values now display (and sum) the cents in the funding fields without rounding.

ALL Users

  • Property Home page
    • The Ready for Anticipated Use section now displays ‘Pending Accomplishment’ when the RAU criteria are met and the associated work package is not yet approved. It used to indicate the RAU was in place and counted immediately which was confusing. Once the associated work package is approved, the RAU status changes to ‘yes’ in the ‘Accomplishment Counted’ column and the Fiscal Year is added to the ‘Counted When’ column.
    • The Property Progress status section has been updated to display a yellow square instead of green checkbox when an accomplishment is pending. This change was made to clarify that the accomplishments are not yet final, until approved by both the PO and National Program Review.
  • Quick Search
    • This function was redesigned and now requests that users search by Property or Cooperative Agreement. Users should select the option from the drop down. The new search:
      • Improves response time
      • Lists both the property ID and property name, or the CA number and CA name, in the results. This is helpful when properties or CAs have multiple occurrences of the same name
      • Users can search using property ID, CA number, property name or CA name
      • Results can be viewed using a scroll bar which has been added to allow users to see more results. 

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • RAU Pending
    • RAU accomplishments will process through the submit & review process like the assessment and cleanup accomplishments. They will have a ‘pending’ status which will be allow properties with Pending RAU to display with the status on the Property Home, Regional Status Report, PO Review Work Packages, and PAR screen pages. Also, the Accomplishments table on the PO’s home page will accurately identify the number of pending RAUs for the PO’s. The listings of pending RAUs can help regions to meet monthly regional RAU targets.
  • Return Work Package for Clarification
    • When a PO sends a work package back for clarification, sometimes the previous owner has left the project and has an inactive account. When this happens the work package is sent back for clarification without an owner assigned. These can become problem work packages. The return function has been modified so if a user is inactive, the PO is presented with a list of other CARs working on the CA. They should choose an alternate CAR.
    • If there are no other CARs associated to the CA, the PO is instructed to update the property information themselves or to contact their regional coordinator for assistance.
  • PO Review Work Packages page
    • The list of property work packages for review now includes a link to each property’s associated grant. This will allow the PO to jump directly to the associated grant if needed. This request came from one of our EPA users.
  • Manage TBA Properties
    • The list of properties on the ‘Manage TBA properties’ screen is now listed in alphabetical order. This makes it much easier to locate a property for some of the TBA states with many, many properties.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.120) was released Monday, November 9, 2020

CAR Users

  • Property Profile Page (PPF)
    • After work package submission, the user is returned to the associated CA page instead of back to user’s Home page. Users who update several properties associated to a grant at the same time will benefit from fewer clicks to continue their data entry work.
    • The property size has been added just above to Predominant Past Use table for reference. The property size is also displayed for the Redevelopment Land Use table but was not always visible for users entering data into the Predominant Past Use area.

ALL Users

  • The Brownfields FY20 Cooperative Agreements for Assessment, Cleanup and Redevelopment grants were uploaded into the ACRES database. They are available for users to update with activity information.
  • Cooperative Agreement status – the ‘open’, ‘closed’ or ‘cancelled’ CA status was previously displayed as a green, blue, or striped circle icon next to the CA name on ACRES screens.  The status now displays in a separate column so it is more useful.  The status columns can be sorted – helpful if a user needs to see only open, or only closed, CAs. The change can be found on the EPA user’s ‘Advanced Search for CA’ and ‘Review Work Package’ screens. For CAR users, the change can be found on the ‘Adding a New Property’, ‘My Properties’, ‘My Work Packages’, ‘Open Quarterly Reports’ and ‘My Cooperative Agreements’ screens.
  • Property Home page
    • The ability to sort by any funding column has been added to the Assessment Activities Funding table. This can be useful for properties that have a lot of funding data.
  • Look and Feel improvements
    • Font size has been increased on the navigation menu bar
    • Success messages have been updated so they are more noticeable. These appear at the top of ACRES screens whenever a work package, property, or CA has been modified by a user.  

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • PAR – The TBAs were split from one large regional TBA into state TBAs in a previous sprint. The state names have been added to the State column on the Assessments Completed, Dollars Leveraged, Jobs Leveraged, and Acres/Properties RAU tabs.
  • Review and Submit screen - the “Add Funding” buttons for each Funding table (Assessment, Cleanup & Redevelopment) have been removed. Previously, clicking the button took the PO to the Property Profile Form which was confusing to many. The change still allows the PO to update existing funding data on the review page but adding new funding should be a CAR effort. POs can return work packages to the CAR to add new funding.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v.6.01.110) was released Monday, October 12, 2020

CAR Users

  • Property Profile Page (PPF)
    • Beginning with the FY20 cooperative agreements, the CA funding type (Hazardous, Petroleum, or Both) on the PPF Part 1 is no longer a required data entry field. It is still required when properties are associated with CAs from previous years.
  • My Cooperative Agreements (CAs) and Manage Quarterly Reports pages
    • The default sort order has been changed to Fiscal Year so the newest CAs display at the top of these pages. This will be especially beneficial to our users who are associated to many CAs. 

ALL Users

  • Property Home page
    • The Ready for Anticipated Use section now displays the Fiscal Year in which the RAU was counted. This makes it easy to determine the RAU accomplishment year at a glance. This improvement was requested by one of the EPA regional staff.
    • A correction was made to this page so that the CA number associated to the property will display for all users associated with the CA (it remains hidden for unassociated users)
  • Cooperative Agreement Home page
    • A new column was added to display Leveraged Funding in the Assessment Activities, Cleanup Activities, and Redevelopment Accomplishment sections. Previously there was a leveraged funding total only. Users can now view the leveraged details for each property in the sections.
    • The IC and EC section has been updated to display the number of acres each property has that are Ready for Anticipated Use (RAU). Previously this section displayed the total number of acres RAU, but not the acres RAU for each associated property.
  • Quarterly Report (QR)
    • RLF CAs - Property Specific tab – the CA funding amount fields are now editable so that when grants are associated to many properties, the funding can be divided among the properties for reporting purposes. Previously the CA funding total displayed for each property, not the property funding total. This change allows the CARs to display a more accurate distribution of EPA funding.
    • Printed QR – the definition header at the top of the printed report has a smaller font size so more report data shows on the first page.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Your ACRES Home page has been improved:
    • All links on the cards are now hyperlinks (displayed in blue and underlined), replacing the old-style buttons
    • The Regional Accomplishment table which displays accomplishment statistics is expanded so all the details display. No need to use the scroll bar to view the approved statistics column anymore.
  • Regional Status Report
    • An improvement was made to this report to ensure that the details in the Pending Accomplishments column match the numbers also reported on the “Accomplishments” card (PO’s Home page).
  • Program Accomplishment Report (PAR)
    • The Excel version of the report was modified to display more detailed information on each individual property. A single property displays on each spreadsheet line.
  • CA Home page
    • The function to “Manage This Cooperative Agreement” has been added to the CA Home page. This allows an associated EPA user to add/update Jurisdiction information and to close a CA (which includes adding the close date, the PO responsible, and status of documentation).
  • For Regional Data Coordinators:
    • Help icons/text have been added to all 3 Data Admin functions on the Home page card

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.100) was released Friday, September 11, 2020

CAR Users

  • Property Profile Form (PPF) – Assessment Funding section. This function has been redesigned for improved performance. The ‘pop up’ screen for data entry has been replaced with a data table that is much easier to use. Issues associated with the pop up (including date entry for certain browsers) have been resolved.

ALL Users

  • The latest ACRES Bulletin was distributed August 18th. 
  • Advanced Search – an issue which caused the filter to display too much data (when searching for a single property by property ID), has been resolved. 

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Just a reminder: ACRES 5 will be retired September 2020 for all EPA users.
  • EPA Admin functions for regional coordinators have been redesigned. There are 3 distinct functions available, accessible from both the Admin card on your Home page and from the drop down menu at the top of all pages:
    • Change work package owner – allows you to reassign a work package in regional review status from one PO in your region to another PO in your region. This is useful when POs will be away but their work packages need reviewing before their return. 
    • Change data reviewer – allows you to change the PO assigned to a Cooperative Agreement. Any work packages already in progress will also be reassigned to the new reviewer. A previous issue with reassignment of work packages has been resolved.
    • View regional users and their assigned CAs/properties – provides the ability to find useful information on ACRES users in your region
  • Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) – an issue with extracting pilot data has been resolved. This was causing a system error.
  • Work package sharing – an issue with allowing collaborators to share has been fixed.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.090) was released Tuesday, July 14, 2020

CAR Users

ALL Users

  • The ‘Acres of Greenspace Created’ field, which had been displayed only on the Property Profile Form (PPF), now also displays on the Property Detail, the Cooperative Agreement Detail, and the TBA Detail pages

Project Officers/ EPA Users

  • Just a reminder: ACRES 5 will be retired on August 1st for all EPA users.
  • Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) – Congressional District has been made a searchable field for this report. Districts can be selected from the State level. To filter the PAR data by district, on Section 3 of the report home page, select a region, select a state within the region, and then opt to select “All” Congressional Districts in the state or only specific districts. Note that states with a single Congressional District (Vermont, Montana, etc.), the only option will be “All”.
  • TBA Users – a TBA drop down has been added to the menu bar at the top of the page for all users associated to TBA grants. This allows access to the TBA functions (open TBA work packages and the TBA properties) from any ACRES page.
  • Project Officer Review Page – the ability to delete/disassociate work packages that are in review can be found at the bottom of the PPF Part 1: Property Information section. When a property is marked for deletion/disassociation, a reason must also be provided. Although it is preferred that deletion/disassociation is performed by the CAR, it is available to POs for instances where the CAR is not available/no longer working on the property.
  • The print function (PDFs) for the Review Work Packages and Property Detail pages has been improved. The action buttons (edit, submit, etc.) which do not work from the ‘print’ version have been removed, and data fields formatted so the pages are easy to read.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.080) was released Friday, June 5, 2020

ALL Users

  • Advanced Search –
    • This function, located at the top of all ACRES pages, has been updated so that filter options are available on a menu bar instead of all options displaying at the top of the search page. Click the ‘Advanced Search’ link and you’ll notice the new ‘Select Filters’ drop down menu. By default, the CAs/properties in the user’s region display in the results section so Region appears on filter menu bar. To access additional filter options, click the ‘Select Filters’ drop down menu. All filters you check will appear on the filter menu bar. Some will allow you to enter text (such as keyword, city and address) and others provide a drop down with options (such as states, CA status and CA type). After selecting and entering your filter criteria, click the ‘Apply Filter’ button. Results are limited to 1,500, so consider adding additional filters to get the specific information you need. 
    • An Export to Excel button has been added to the Advanced Search page. Click the button and the search results are displayed on an Excel spreadsheet.
  • For Section 128(a) State and Tribal Response PALs users, a new more detailed spreadsheet is available. It lists the PALs counts for the previous year only, breaking down the counts by state and Tribe within regions. The new spreadsheet is available from the ‘View Historical PALs Data’ page. Click the ‘Export Detail to Excel’ link to produce the spreadsheet.
  • Congressional District – this field has been added to the Property Detail page and can be found under the Latitude and Longitude fields. In the near future, the Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) will be updated with a filter to allow Project Officers to extract accomplishment information by congressional district.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Regional Status Report – issues with the sorting of Status Since, Owner and Project Officer columns have been resolved. The columns now sort correctly by year/month/date and last name/first name.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.070) was released Wednesday, May 6, 2020

ALL Users

  • Targeted Brownfield Assessments (TBAs) (STAG funded) have been changed. Previously, associated properties were displayed under a single TBA for each region (several hundred properties for some regions). TBAs have now been subdivided by state and territory for each region. For example, the R10 TBA (STAG Funded) is associated to 103 properties. Now there are 4 TBAs for Region 10:
    • R10 TBA - Alaska (STAG Funded) with 42 assoc. properties,
    • R10 TBA - Idaho (STAG Funded) with 9 assoc. properties,
    • R10 TBA - Oregon (STAG Funded) with 9 assoc. properties, and
    • R10 TBA - Washington (STAG Funded) with 43 assoc. properties. 

This change makes it easier to locate the properties, gather information by location, and use ACRES reports for statistics by state.

  • Superfund TBAs have been renamed to Pre-law Superfund TBA. In addition, both Pre-law Superfund TBAs and ARRA TBAs will be read-only as they are no longer actively updated. Should you need to update their associated properties, please reach out to the ACRES Help Desk and the updates can be made for you.
  • News and Alerts – whenever important ACRES information needs to be conveyed to users, an alert box will display at the top of the ACRES pages. It has been added as a tool to warn of changes/issues that might affect system performance. Hopefully you will rarely see it!

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • The Admin functions for regional coordinators have been restored so all functions that were available in ACRES 5 are available in ACRES 6. Regional Coordinators can find links to the functions on their Home page “Admin” card.  Coordinators can change the owner of a work package from one Project Officer in their region to another, when the work package is in “Regional Review” status. Coordinators can also view the contact information and associated cooperative agreements for Cooperative Agreement Recipients in their region. In addition, they have the capability to change the Data Reviewer of a CA, and can also associate a CA to a Project Officer in their region.
  • Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) – as requested by several regional users, the PAR Export to Excel spreadsheet has 2 new columns to display latitude and longitude. These appear on spreadsheet tabs for all accomplishments (assessments completed, cleanups completed, dollars leveraged, jobs leveraged and acres ready for anticipated use).

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.060) was released Friday, April 10, 2020

ALL Users

ICR changes, for updates to the public facing ACRES screens that collect data, are reviewed once every 3 years. The changes undergo an extensive review process and must be approved by OMB. OMB has just granted approval and the changes are available with this release.

The majority of the changes affect the Property Profile Form (PPF) pages. These are outlined below. 

Note that there are no changes to the Job Training pages. There is a new PALs report available to state and Tribal Cooperative Agreement Recipients (CAR) for their annual reporting requirement. It appears on the Home Page only for CAR users associated to State & Tribal grants.

PPF Part 1

  • The Type of Funding provides a new option for Both (added to options Hazardous and Petroleum).
  • The Property Owner information has been moved from PPF Part 3 to the Property Section on Part 1. The 2 options remain the same: Government or Private
  • The State and Tribal VRP prompt has been reworded for clarity. It now asks, “Is this property enrolled in a State or Tribal Voluntary Response Program?” The options are: Yes or No

PPF Part 2

A number of fields have changed position/location within this section

  • Contaminants table – the option for “unknown” has been removed. Two new options have been added: “No RECs” and “Insufficient Information”.
  • Media table – the option for “unknown” has been removed. 
  • Changes in the Environmental Cleanup Information section
    • 4 new fields have been added
      • Indicate whether Cleanup/Treatment Technology(ies) were implemented: options are Yes, No or Unknown
      • If Cleanup/Treatment Technology(ies) are required, indicate the category(ies) (check all that apply): 6 options are provided
      • A text data entry box to collect Additional Cleanup/Treatment Technology(ies) Information
      • Address of Data Source (URL if available)
    • Engineering Controls (ECs) and Institutional Controls ICs) sections have been moved into the cleanup section, with ECs displaying first, immediately under the 4 new fields mentioned above.
    • The Cleanup Completion Documentation is moved to the bottom of the Cleanup section, and only displays if a cleanup completion date is entered. A third documentation option “Other forms of documentation” has been added (a text box is provided for details)
    • For cleanup funding for RLF grants only, 3 new fields have been added: Date RLF Load Signed, Repayment Period and Interest Rate.

PPF Part 3

  • The Redevelopment Information section has been moved from PPF Part 2 to Part 3
  • Land Use Data collects Actual Land Use only. Previously there was an additional table to collect Planned Land Use which will no longer be collected.
  • The Multi-Story checkbox has been removed. Data entry boxes for Square footage are displayed for the Redevelopment Land Use table.
  • The Property Description and Property Highlights text areas have been combined into a single text area which is titled Property Highlights. Information that was previously entered into the 2 text areas will still be displayed in the single text box. Note that all prior text information is displayed – no data is lost.
  • The data fields for Property Photograph, Videos, and Superfund Liability will no longer be used and have been removed from the PPF.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • The Regional Performance Report on Cooperative Agreements, version for ACRES 6, is available from the Project Officer’s Reports Center card (Home Page) and from the Reports drop down menu at the top of all ACRES pages.  An optional filter has been added for the “Year Announced” so that it is easy to pull grants for a specific year.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.50) was released Monday, March 2, 2020

ALL Users

  • Area Wide Planning (AWP) Grants – these grants, and their tabs with extensive text fields, are displaying in ACRES 6. All of these grants are closed and their update functionality is no longer available (AWP grants only). Should you need to update any AWP data, please contact the ACRES Help Desk and they will be able to assist you.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • ACRES Navigation Bar – the menu bar at the top of the ACRES pages has new drop down menus so EPA users can quickly navigate to the functions available on the Home page. To use them, click the menu and the options display. Included are Quick Start (Review Work Packages, Review Quarterly Reports, My Open TBA Word Packages, My Regional Cooperative Agreements, My Projects), Work Packages, Reports (Review Quarterly Reports, View Past Quarterly Reports, Regional Status Report, Add Annual PALS Data, View Historical PALs Data, Regional Performance Report on CAs), and My Account (My Regional Cooperative Agreements, My Projects, Manage TBA Property). Users can access all of these functions from any ACRES page.
  • Anecdotal Property Text Box – one of our POs noticed that a property in review had a lot of text in the Anecdotal Property field and not all of it displayed. A correction was made so the text box size expands to fit the data and all text can be easily read.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.30) was released Friday, January 30, 2020

ALL Users

  • Quarterly Report Updates

o  The Quarterly Report for RLF grants is now available for use. This grant type, similar to the cleanup and assessment grants, has an automated report that allows the CAR to create and submit required quarterly reports to EPA project officers. There are benefits to using the automated report. It saves CAR users time. Property information in ACRES is used to auto populate the Property Specific section, pertinent data entered in one quarter (such as funding and tasking information) is copied to the next quarterly report reducing data entry each quarter, and past reports can be saved/printed/emailed whenever you need to access them. It is recommended that you begin using automated quarterly reports for all NEW grants. To start a quarterly report, click the “Manage My Quarterly Reports” button on the home page. When the Manage page displays, click the “Add Quarterly Report” button for the RLF grant listed.

o  Assessment Quarterly Reports – ACRES leveraged funding data for assessment activities has always displayed on the Property Specific section of the report. This section now also displays leveraged funding for cleanup and redevelopment activities as well. These totals, if applicable, display at the bottom of the property table.

  • The “Advanced Search” function has been added to the top (right corner) of the ACRES pages. Use the Advanced Search to find specific properties or cooperative agreements. Filter options include region, state, property name/address/city, property ID, CA number, CA status/announce year/grant type. There is also a map feature (click the “View on Map” button) that allows you to see on a map all the properties that match the filter criteria.
  • My Properties page – sorting has been added to this page which lists all of a CARs or POs associated properties. Users can sort by any column on the page including property name, property ID, grant type, owner, etc.
  • RLF Post Closeout grant – a new icon (purple square) for RLF Post Closeout grants has been added to all ACRES screens that display CA types. Already displayed are green circle icons for open CAs, blue circle icons for closed CAs, and circle with blue slash icons for cancelled CAs.    

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • TBAs card – My Open TBA Work Packages function – an issue that caused additional TBA work packages to display has been corrected. 

CARs

  • A correction was made for Section 128(a) State and Tribal properties. These do not require a funding type (funding options: hazardous or petroleum) during initial property creation. Funding type is a required field for most other grant types.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.40) was released Friday, January 30, 2020

ALL Users

  • Property Details page – a Print button has been added to the top of bottom of the page.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Work Package Review page – Project Officers requested to have a map displaying a property’s location on the Review page. They stated this is the easiest way to confirm a correct location. The map has been added to the Property Information section of the Review page.

CARs

  • Menu bar enhanced – The menu bar at the top of the ACRES pages has drop down menus so users can quickly navigate to most of the functions available on the Home page. Click the menu and options display. Included are Quick Start (Add New Property, Add CA, Edit Existing Property), Work Packages, Reports (My Open Quarterly Reports, Manage My Quarterly Report), and My Account (My CAs, My Properties).
  • Property Profile Form (PPF) Page 1 – Section 128(a) State & Tribal properties have a new help icon that explains how to add a correct latitude and longitude for properties without an address. Tribal properties sometimes do not have a numbered address on a street. Since ACRES auto-populates the lat/long fields based on a valid address, it is important for CARs entering unusual addresses to know how to add the fields. The help icon is located next to the Address field for properties that are associated to Section 128(a) grants.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.01.20) was released Tuesday, December 3, 2019

ALL Users

  • The new 2019 grants have been uploaded into ACRES, and can be updated with your assessment, cleanup and redevelopment data. This year 223 new grants were added. Supplemental funding was added to approximately 100 existing grants.
  • Section 128(a) State/Tribal Program Activity Levels (PALs) has been added to ACRES. This new feature will allow CAR State and Tribal users to enter their annual reporting information online.
  • A missing link for “Help Tools” (located at the top of the ACRES pages) has been added. Clicking the link opens the EPA ACRES Information page. This page offers a number of helpful tools including general information, training information, helpful tips, technical support contact and links to related information.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Project Officer Home Page – Accomplishments card. The accomplishments table reports the number of Properties RAU (both approved and pending this FY). It used to report Acres RAU.
  • PAR improvement for the RAU accomplishments - a column has been added which reports the property’s Date of PO Approval.

CARs

  • “View existing properties on a map” function has been added. This is available on the Add a New Property (duplicate check) page.
  • The “My CAs” link was added at the top bar of ACRES pages so users can quickly access their next CA without having to return to the Home page.
  • Quarterly Reports (QR) improvements include:
    • The “Create New QR” button has been deactivated for closed grants
    • The “Delete QR” function has been added to allow a user to delete a report that has not been submitted to their PO (helpful when more than one QR has erroneously been created for a grant)
    • Help text was added for Assessment grants

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v 6.00.10) was released Friday, November 8, 2019

ALL Users

  • 2020 EWDJT Grant Fact Sheets

The 2020 EWDJT Grant Fact Sheets were posted to the EPA web site on Thursday, October 24, 2019. EPA is selecting approximately $5.1 million in Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training (EWDJT) grants to 26 communities across the country to recruit, train, and place unemployed and underemployed individuals with the skills needed to secure long-term employment in the environmental field. To view the grant fact sheets, please go to: https://java.epa.gov/acrespub/gfs/

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • The Regional Status Report is available on ACRES 6. 

This report provides a listing of all open work packages in your region. It is helpful for identifying work packages with accomplishments pending (useful for meeting monthly targets) and for determining work that is taking a long time to complete. To access the report, click the second link on your Reports Center card on the Home page. A new feature provides easy filtering of report data. At the top of most report columns is a filter box which begins automatically filtering work packages as letters are typed.

  • Flag for entering data for closed cooperative agreements into ACRES

For POs working on Phase II of the Data Collection Project, a flag has been added to the Property Profile Form. It identifies properties that have had accomplishment data added by the PO after the grant has been closed.

  •  A miscalculation error on the PAR has been corrected. It had affected Pilot grant totals.
  • The Quarterly Report (PO Review version) now has print capability.
  • An error on the PO Review page was including assessment funding that had been marked for deletion, in the funding total. This has been corrected.

CARs

  • Property Profile Form Updates

PPF Page 2, the Assessment Funding data entry table has been improved. At the request of one of our CAR users, the EPA Brownfield funding source will be the first source to display on the drop down menu.

On the PPF Review and Submit page, a functional button added to the top of the review page will quickly relocate the cursor to the bottom of the page and the ‘Submit for Review’ button.

We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 6.0) was released Friday, October 4th, 2019

All Users

  • ACRES 6.0 is here!

Emails were sent to all active ACRES users on October 4th announcing that ACRES 6.0 is up and running. In case you missed the email, there is a new URL to access ACRES: https://acres6.epa.gov. There are a few ACRES functions that are not yet available (some reports for example) but they will be added over the next few months. Note that ACRES 5.0 will be available for a few more months before being removed. All system enhancements are being added to ACRES 6.0 only.

ACRES training and Quick Reference Guides have been updated for the new 6.0 version. These are available on the EPA ACRES website.

Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.150) was released Friday, February 2nd, 2018

All Users

  • ACRES Bulletin – January 2018

    The January 2018 bulletin was distributed to users.
     
  • Section 128(a) State/Tribal Program Activity Levels (PALs) Report

    Two new questions have been added to this annual report. Statistical data will be collected for engineering and institutional controls and for the Voluntary Cleanup Program/Response Program.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.130) was released Wednesday, August 23, 2017.

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Area Wide Planning (AWP) Grants – close/cancel function added

    Project Officers (POs) can now change the status of their AWP grant from open to either closed or cancelled from their AWP grant home page. Similar to other grant types, the PO can click the ‘Manage this Cooperative Agreement’ button at the top of the page, enter a closing date and the responsible PO name, and save the status change.  The status icon is changed from a green circle to solid blue circle to indicate that the AWP is closed. Note that data can continue to be added to the AWP grant, even though it is closed.
     
  • Quarterly Reports generate a PDF for the Project Officer

    When a PO reviews and approves a Quarterly Report, an email with a PDF copy of their report will be sent to them. The report is also available at their fingertips in ACRES (for forever) should they opt to view it online.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.110) was released Friday, June 9, 2017.

All Users

  • 2017 Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training (EWDJT) Awards
     

    The 2017 EWDJT Grant Fact Sheets were posted to the EPA web site on Tuesday, May 16, 2017. The EPA announced the selection of 14 grantees for approximately $2.8 million in EWDJT grants. Each grantee will receive funds to operate environmental job training programs that advance environmental justice by providing opportunities for residents living in areas impacted by contaminated lands. Trainees gain experience for jobs related to cleanup activities in their own communities. To view the grant fact sheets, please go to: https://java.epa.gov/acrespub/gfs/

  • 2017 Assessment and Cleanup Awards Announced
     

    The 2017 AC Grant Fact Sheets were posted to the EPA web site on Wednesday, May 31st. The EPA announced the selection of 166 communities who will receive 172 grants, for approximately $56.8 million in AC grants. These funds will aid under-served and economically disadvantaged communities through the assessment and cleanup of abandoned industrial and commercial properties and expand the ability of communities to recycle vacant and abandoned properties for new, productive reuses. To view the grant fact sheets, please go to: https://java.epa.gov/acrespub/gfs/

Project Officers/EPA Users

  • Program Accomplishment Report (PAR)
     

    Revisions have been made to better organize filter options on the PAR. The ARC, State & Tribal, and TBA grants (whose accomplishments count towards GPRA annual targets) are grouped at the top left side of the report selection page. The JT, Area-Wide Planning Showcase Community grant options (these grant types do not have GPRA targets) are grouped at the bottom of the selection page.

    The ability to include ARRA data has been added. On the right side of the report selection page, you have the option to select ARRA data only or to include ARRA data with other grant types already selected (ex. ARC).

    Several help icons have been added to provide detailed explanations.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.100) was released Tuesday, May 9, 2017.

Cooperative Agreement Recipients

  • Property Profile Form (PPF) Start and Completion Dates
     

    The completion dates in the PPF Assessment, Cleanup and Redevelopment sections are required to be at least one day later than the associated start dates. If the same date is entered in both date fields, an error message will be displayed.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.090) was released Friday, April 7.

Cooperative Agreement Recipients

  • Area-Wide Planning (AWP) Data Entry
     

    After using the new data entry page for several months, the following improvements were requested and have been made.

    • On the Project Area Information tab, the ACRES properties listed on the page link to their associated Property Home page. Users can quickly access the property to check data, for example, verifying that the leveraged funding isn’t double counted as both property and AWP funding.
    • On the Project Area Information tab, users are no longer required to enter a catalyst site before the tab data is saved.
    • On the Redevelopment Site(s) tab, all ACRES properties and the non-ACRES catalyst/high priority sites display on the tab to collect redevelopment information. Previously, only sites marked as catalysts were displayed.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.070) was released Friday, January 13th.

Cooperative Agreement Recipients

  • Area-Wide Planning (AWP) Data Entry
     

    The new AWP reporting home page was released in the last sprint (December 2016). If you are updating AWP information for the first time and need a hint on how to start, here are the ‘quick clicks’ you’ll need: click the ‘My Cooperative Agreement’ tab on your home page and then click the link to the AWP CA. The new AWP page has 7 tabs. Use the tabs to move from page to page as you enter AWP information, being sure to click the ‘Save’ button on each page. To have your project officer review the information, click the ‘Review & Submit’ tab, scroll to the bottom of the review page and click the ‘Submit’ button.>

    If you have any questions feel free to reach out to the ACRES Help Desk. Feedback is welcome and can be sent using the ‘Feedback’ or ‘Contact Us’ links at the top of every ACRES page.

  • Property Profile Page (PPF) – county names added automatically
     

    When a new property is created, or a property address updated, the county in which the property exists will be automatically updated on the PPF. This will save users data entry time.

Project Officers

  • Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) – option to display accomplishments in Draft status
     

    The option to display draft accomplishments (work packages awaiting approval) has been added to the PAR. To view draft accomplishment statistics and details, select the report criteria (accomplishment type(s), year(s), region(s)) and click the box for ‘Draft Data (awaiting approval)’ in the Optional Selections column. Then click the ‘Run Report’ button. When selecting draft, note that ONLY draft (no final) accomplishments are displayed.

  • Jurisdiction Data Association
     

    The ability to identify jurisdiction information for a cooperative agreement has been added back into the project officer’s ‘Manage This Cooperative Agreement’ function. To access this feature, navigate to the ‘My Regional Cooperative Agreements’ tab and click the link for a specific CA. At the top of the CA Home page, click the ‘Manage This Cooperative Agreement’ button and scroll to the Jurisdiction Information section. Select a state/territory and a Jurisdiction Type; then click the ‘Search Jurisdictions’ button. A list of available jurisdictions is displayed. Click the ‘Associate Jurisdiction’ button next to the appropriate line and it will appear in the jurisdiction table. This information will be passed to CIMC during the monthly ACRES-CIMC update process (18th of each month).

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.060) was released Friday, December 9th.

All Users

  • ACRES Bulletin – November 2016
     

    The November 2016 bulletin was distributed to users. 

  • Property Home Page – Accomplishment Pending
     

    Under a cleanup grant, when a property has all the information needed to qualify as an accomplishment, ACRES will display the status “Cleanup pending approval” on the Property Home page (Cleanup section). Previously this message also included the fiscal year in which the property met accomplishment requirements. However, the accomplishment is counted in the year the cleanup is approved, not the year requirements are met. Because verification and approval can take some time, this created some confusion when the 'pending approval' year did not match the approval year.

Cooperative Agreement Recipients

  • Area-Wide Planning (AWP) Home Page Redesigned
     

    The AWP reporting home page has been completely redesigned! You are now able to provide specific information about your project area, including area-wide boundaries, catalyst/high priority brownfield site(s) details, project leveraging, type(s) of reuse planned and project web links. You can also report your implementation activities, share brownfields redevelopment updates and associate existing ACRES property records from brownfield sites within the same project area.

    These improvements to the home page were made to help you share more details around your specific project area, record important information about key brownfield sites and track a variety of accomplishments in a more consistent way across different AWP project stages. The AWP Home page now includes six tabs to track AWP-specific data:

    1. Project Area Information - includes project boundaries, catalyst/high priority brownfields and associated brownfield sites
    2. Leveraged Resources - helps you develop or implement your area-wide plan
    3. Plan Summary - highlights AWP goals and project web links
    4. Lessons Learned - helps others benefit from your experiences
    5. Implementation Activities – record these during or after the AWP grant
    6. Redeveloped Sites - aligns with your community’s overall AWP goals

Project Officers

  • Property Accomplishment Report (PAR) Enhancement
     

    On the PAR report, for JT reporting, years FY05 and earlier are reported in greater detail. Previously a report for the year FY06 included a summary of all data from 1998 through 2006. Each of the older grants now displays as an individual report line. To view pre-FY06 data on the PAR, select “Job Training Cooperative Agreements by Grant FY” as an Alternate Cooperative Agreement Type and select “All Years” as the Select Year(s) to report.

  • PO Home Page
     

    The accomplishment table at the top of a PO's home page has been modified to exclude ARRA accomplishments. ARRA accomplishments do not count towards annual targets and are therefore not included in either PAT or PAR counts. Removing them from the PO Home page provides consistency in annual accomplishment reporting. If a PO wishes to view ARRA statistics, these are available as an alternate option on the PAR to list only ARRA.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.040) was released Friday, October 7th.

All Users

  • Changes to the Property Profile Form (PPF)
     

    Every 3 years, EPA reevaluates the PPF to determine whether new data fields are needed and whether existing data fields are no longer useful. In 2016, the following changes were approved and are effective with this release:

    1. A new field, ‘Property Alias’, has been added to the Property Background Information section, located below the ‘Property Name’. Multiple aliases can be entered. Additionally, the Find Property function has been modified to allow users to search using ‘Property Alias’ name. To search by alias name, enter the name into either Keyword or the Property Name and click the ‘Filter Now’ button.

    2. In the Property Geographic Information section, 4 fields related to the manual calculation of latitude and longitude (lat/long) have been removed. Lat/long values are automatically added to ACRES based on the property address. The removed fields are:

    • Horizontal Collection Method
    • Source Map Scale Number
    • Reference Point
    • Horizontal Reference Datum

The PPF will be reevaluated again in 2019. Suggestions for PPF improvements are always welcome and will be included in the discussion for the next update. Please send these to the ACRES Help Desk.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.020) was released Tuesday, July 19th.

All Users

  • Quarterly Progress Report now available for Assessment Grants

    Similar to the Quarterly Progress Reporting for cleanup grants, a version is now available to all users for entering/editing/approving their quarterly reporting requirements for assessment grants. Some of the required report data, including assessment start/end dates and funding, is pulled from ACRES which makes the report much easier to complete online compared to using a report template/paper version. Also, some of the report information is automatically forwarded to future reports which further reduces the amount of time it takes to complete a quarterly progress report.

    CAR users can access the report by clicking the “My Cooperative Agreements” tab in the middle of their Home page. A listing of all associated CAs is displayed and a new column appears on the right. For every assessment or cleanup grant that does not have a quarterly report for the previous quarter, a green button titled “Generate Quarterly Report” will display. Click the green button to start a new report. Enter information in all applicable fields (note that report information is organized by tabs) and then submit to your project officer for review/approval using the last tab, Review & Submit. Have questions on what you should enter into a particular field? Click the help icon at the top of each section for details.

    Project Officers can access reports that have been submitted for their approval by clicking the ‘Quarterly Reports to Review’ tab located in the middle of their Home page. All submitted reports will be listed under the tab.

    Once a quarterly progress report has been submitted and approved, it is available for view only. Reports from previous quarters are accessible on both the “My Cooperative Agreements” tab and on the Cooperative Agreement Home page. Click the ‘View Previous Quarterly Reports’ link and then select a specific report.

    Reports can be printed at any stage (during CAR initial entry, during project officer (PO) approval process, and after the report is approved/final) using the ‘Print’ button at the bottom of the report.
     
  • ACRES Help Desk – Final Email Address Change

    The technical issue with the ACRES Help Desk email has a final resolution. It includes a change in the email address. Please send help requests to [email protected]. The links to the Help Desk in ACRES have all been updated so if you click on the link in ACRES, you will be directed to the correct address. However< if you have the URL saved on your computer, be sure to change it to the new address.
     

Project Officers

  • Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) Enhancement

    A new grant type selection option has been added to the report filters. It is for Multi-Purpose cooperative agreements. Note that only 9 of these grants were awarded (all in FY12).

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.010) was released Monday, June 20th.

All Users

  • Assessment, Cleanup and Revolving Loan Fund (ARC) Grant Awards

    The 2016 ARC Grant Fact Sheets were posted to the EPA web site on Tuesday, May 31st. The EPA announced the selection of 131 communities who will receive 218 grants, for approximately $55.2 million in ARC grants. These funds will aid under-served and economically disadvantaged communities through the assessment and cleanup of abandoned industrial and commercial properties and expand the ability of communities to recycle vacant and abandoned properties for new, productive reuses. To view the grant fact sheets, please go to: https://java.epa.gov/acrespub/gfs/
     
  • Cooperative Agreement (CA) Home Page – Primary Data Contact

    The separate ‘Primary Contact’ field displayed on the CA Home page has been combined with the 'Primary Reviewer' field and now displays as the 'Primary Reviewer/Contact'.
     
  • ACRES Help Desk – New Email Address

    Due to technical issues at the EPA, the email address for the ACRES Help Desk has been changed. Please send help requests to [email protected] (the old URL was [email protected]). The links to the Help Desk in ACRES have all been updated so if you click on the link in ACRES, you will be directed to the correct address. However if you have the URL saved on your computer, be sure to change it to the new address.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.02.000) was released Tuesday, May 31st.

All Users

  • Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training (EWDJT) Awards

    The 2016 EWDJT Grant Fact Sheets were posted to the EPA web site on Thursday, May 12th. The EPA announced the selection of 18 grantees for approximately $3.5 million in EWDJT grants. Each grantee will receive funds to operate environmental job training programs that advance environmental justice by providing opportunities for residents living in areas impacted by contaminated lands. Trainees gain experience for jobs related to cleanup activities in their own communities. To view the grant fact sheets, please go to: https://java.epa.gov/acrespub/gfs/
     
  • Property Profile Form (PPF) – Help Text Update

    On Part 2 of the PPF, the help text has been clarified in the Contaminants & Media Affected Information section for the following fields:
     
    • REC (Recognized Environmental Conditions)
      Indicate the presence or likely presence of any hazardous substances or petroleum products in, on, or at a property. Please make sure to enter this information at the end of Phase I.
       
    • Found (Contaminant/Media Found)
      Indicate what types of contaminants have been identified or detected through the assessment activities, marking the boxes for each and every type of contaminant that has been detected. Levels may or may not exceed relevant standards set by the state/jurisdiction. Please make sure to enter the Found information at the end of Phase II.

EPA Users

  • Program Accomplishment Report (PAR) – TBA Accomplishments

    The display of accomplishments that are associated with TBA grants has been modified on the PAR. Because TBAs can be associated with properties from multiple states, the state listed on the report is now the state associated to the property. It appears in a new ‘Property State’ column adjacent the ‘Property Name’ column.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.140) was released Tuesday, April 26th.

CAR Users

  • Area Wide Planning (AWP) Property Association
    Only existing properties can be associated to an AWP grant. If a user wishes to associate a property to AWP, it should have previously been added to ACRES and associated to either an assessment, cleanup, RLF or state/Tribal grant. The ‘add property’ button which was erroneously displaying on the AWP grant home page has been removed.

EPA Users

  • New Program Accomplishment Report (PAR)
    We listened and after collecting suggestions and ‘like-to-haves’, the PAR has been redesigned to better meet your reporting needs. Driven by accomplishment type (assessment, cleanup, dollars leveraged, jobs leveraged or acres/properties ready for reuse), you can filter by grant type, as applicable for the accomplishment type selected, if desired. In addition, you can select a specific fiscal year, a number of years, or all years. You can further filter by region(s) or state(s). For example, you can search for FY16 cleanup accomplishments in a single state within your region or for the entire region. Or you may opt to review all of last year’s accomplishments by selecting FY15, all accomplishment types and all regions.

    We’ve also added the capability to report accomplishments for alternate CA types including Job Training, Area Wide Planning and ARRA grants.

    The new PAR can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet so you can save, print, share, and further edit the information.
     

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.110) was released Tuesday, February 2nd.

All ACRES Users

  • ACRES Bulletin
    A new ACRES Bulletin was emailed to users on January 22nd. It featured a success story from Leavenworth, Kansas (Region 7) and highlights from the 2015 Brownfields Conference. If you’d like to view other versions of the bulletin, simply click the ‘View Previous Bulletins’ link at the top of the bulletin. There are some informative and pertinent articles for using ACRES, particularly in Frank’s Tips.
     
  • 2016 Grants Added to ACRES Database
    New grants were added to ACRES including State and Tribal – 128(a), Area-Wide Planning (AWP) and Job Training grants. For the current fiscal year to date, there are 285 grants/cooperative agreements in ACRES.
     

EPA Users

  • Regional Performance Report for AWP Grants
    When the AWP tab was added, there were very few AWP grants and the tab displayed all of them when clicked. This is the third year the grants have been awarded and there are now almost 50, making it more cumbersome to use the tab. The tab has been updated to display only the AWP grants in your region.
     
  • Cooperative Agreement Home Page – Add New Properties
    When associating a new property from the CA Home page (including TBAs), POs will notice that the Find Property page is filtered to display properties only from within the state/region. This significantly reduces the load time for the property results page. The filter options on the left side of the screen can be used to further filter the properties (i.e. by City) or to expand to include adjoining states. This improvement was requested by one of our EPA users.
     
  • State and Tribal Program Activity Levels (PALs) Report
    Several minor improvements were added this month:
    • When users access the PALs organization page, they now have the option to view the statistical data entered for an organization. Any organization that has data entered will have a ‘View’ link to the right of the name. Click the link to view activities in which the organization participated.
    • A Tribal-only version of the report is now available for viewing. Click the ‘Display Tribal Only PAL Report’ link to produce the report.

     

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.100) was released Tuesday, December 15th.

All ACRES Users

  • WAM Password Reset link
    At the 2015 Brownfields Conference, an ACRES trainee suggested adding a link to the ACRES Login page to take users directly to the WAM password reset page. This link, titled ‘ Reset your EPA WAM password’, has been added as requested. The link benefits users who might miss or delete the WAM reset password emails (in some cases the emails end up in a user’s spam folder).
     

EPA Users

  • State and Tribal Program Activity Levels (PALs) Report
    An annual statistical report that summarizes state/Tribal information has been added to the Reports tab. It is available for Project Officers and other EPA officers for viewing only. The report consists of 3 tables. The first 2 contain statistics gathered from the state/tribal grantees, which are entered the January following the end of a fiscal year. The third table contains state/tribal accomplishment numbers which are real time (extracted from ACRES).
     
  • Regional Status tab
    On the Regional Status page, the column for ‘Status Since’ which contained both ‘status’ and ‘status date last updated’ has been split into 2 separate columns. Project officers can now sort on each of these fields individually providing better reporting options.
     

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.090) was released Tuesday, November 10th.

All ACRES Users

  • 2015 Supplemental Funding in ACRES
    Approximately 22 ACRES grants were updated with supplemental funding information.
     
  • EPA Completes Website Redesign
    EPA’s new web design affected many of the links that ACRES users access. ACRES was updated for the new EPA links and then tested at length to verify that all links work correctly.
     
  • Internet Explorer (IE) 11 Issues
    In its latest upgrade to IE 11, Microsoft introduced changes that have affected the display of several ACRES screens on some government computers. Team ACRES has worked quickly to identify and remedy the issues. The IE 11 issues do not appear for any other browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, and earlier versions of IE.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.080) was released Tuesday, October 13th.

All ACRES Users

  • 2015 Assessment and Cleanup Grants in ACRES

    The 2015 Assessment and Cleanup grants have been loaded into the ACRES database. There are now 30 cleanup and 81 assessment grants. Users who are associated with the grants can enter property information directly into ACRES.

    Work is underway to add the 2015 supplemental information to the ACRES database this month.

EPA Users

  • Regional Status Tab

    The report for this tab has been problematic for several larger regions due to the substantial number of work packages to display. To resolve the problems the report now displays the data on pages as opposed to one long running report. Similar to the Regional Performance Report, the default displays 10 work packages per page. At the bottom of the report, the user has an option to display up to 50 work packages per page (options are available in increments of 10). Note that the sort feature at the top of the page will sort for all work packages, not just those displayed on the page.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.070) was released Friday, September 11th.

All ACRES Users

  • 2015 Job Training and Area-Wide Planning Grants in ACRES

    The 2015 Job Training and Area-Wide Planning grants have been loaded into the ACRES database. Users who are associated with the grants can now enter property and job training information directly into ACRES.

    Work is underway to add the 2015 Assessment and Cleanup grants to the ACRES database this month.

  • Showcase Community Grants

    Nineteen older grants (award years 1998 – 2004) have been designated as Showcase Community Grants. Previously these were designated as either an Assessment or a Cleanup grant. These grants provided funding for the Brownfields Showcase Communities program, whereby EPA staff were assigned to work at the city level on the city's Brownfields program under an Intergovernmental Personnel Agreement (IPA). The Showcase Community Grants can be easily viewed using the ACRES Find Property/Cooperative Agreement tab, filtering on a Cooperative Agreement Type of “Showcase Community.”

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.060) was released Tuesday, August 4th.

All ACRES Users

  • Property Home Page – Property Progress Status Bar

    In the Property Progress section, a new status of “Not Required” is displayed when property cleanup is actually not required. If cleanup is required and has not begun, the status will continue to display “Not Started”. Likewise, when the Institutional Controls are designated as “not required” on the Property Profile Page (PPF), the Property Progress status will display “Not Required”. This status bar update, requested by one of our Project Officers, will allow the actions to indicate that they aren’t needed instead of haven’t been started yet.

  • ACRES Bulletin 

    The latest bulletin was emailed to users on Friday, July 31st. It features the Green Bay, Wisconsin riverfront redesign success story, information on the 2015 grant announcements, and tips on keeping your ACRES account current.

  • Find Property/Cooperative Agreement/TBA Tab

    The ‘Export to Excel’ option for this tab produces a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet format has been modified so that the spreadsheet can be sorted by any of the data columns.

CAR Users

  • Home Page - Instructions for Completing a Property Profile Form (PPF) 

    A link has been added to the Quick Links section on the Home page. Click the Instructions for Completing a Property Profile Form (PPF) link and detailed instructions are displayed for completing a Brownfields Property Profile Form.

EPA Users

  • Quarterly Report 

    Project Officer comments are now retained after the Quarterly Report is returned for clarification to a grantee. The EPA Project Officer can view them after the updated report is returned for approval.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.050) was released Tuesday, June 23rd.

All ACRES Users

  • 2015 Grant Fact Sheets added for Job Training, Cleanup and Assessment Grantees

    The 19 Environmental Workforce Development and Job Training (EWDJT) Grantees announced for 2015 have been added to the Grant Fact Sheets.  The approximate $3.6 million in grants will be used in communities across the country to recruit and train unemployed and underemployed individuals with the skills needed to secure employment in the environmental field.

    The communities being awarded the grants will receive $54.3 million in EPA Brownfields funding. These funds will aid communities and businesses in returning economic stability to under-served and economically disadvantaged neighborhoods through the assessment and cleanup of abandoned industrial and commercial properties.

  • Area-Wide Planning Grants

    A new text field has been added to the Area-Wide Planning (AWP) grant home page. For each leveraged funding line, a new Date field is available to allow users to provide timeframe (or dates) for the project area leveraging. This allows for a clearer picture of the leveraging that took place before the AWP grant project was awarded vs. the leveraging that happened later. A help icon is available for the field with sample data entry suggestions.

CAR Users

  • New Property Add – Duplication Check

    To reduce the creation of duplicate properties, a new check has been added to the Property Add function. When users enter the address information and size for a new property, ACRES performs a validation using the street and zip code to see if a matching property already exists. If one is found, a popup is displayed which:

    1. Notifies the CAR that a similar property already exists,
    2. Lists information on the property (ID, name, address) for use in determining whether the properties are duplicates or unique, and
    3. Gives the CAR the options to either add the property anyhow or return to the Find page to associate the existing property to their grant.

     
  • Property Profile Form (PPF), Page 2, Assessment Funding

    When Assessment Phase I or II funding information is added to the PPF (Page 2) and the CAR is adding EPA/federal funding, the activity field will be pre-populated with the source of funding selected (Phase I or Phase II).

EPA Users

  • Home Page - View Work Packages out of Workflow

    Once a Project Officer (PO) finishes their processing of a work package and assigns it forward, they can no longer see the work package or what is happening with it. A new option has been added to the bottom of the PO Home page to allow POs to view work packages that they have worked on which are not yet complete. With a click on the “Show" link at the bottom of the Home page, they can view work packages that have either been submitted to HQ for approval or returned to CARs for clarification. This is a useful tool for following up on work packages that the PO wishes to have completed. Note that the list must be opened using the link (it defaults to being hidden) – and once opened, can be closed by clicking the Hide link.

    This improvement was requested by one of our ACRES Project Officers.

Admin Users

  • Cooperative Agreement Administration – Initial Project Start Date 

    The Cooperative Agreement Administration function has been updated to allow for the entry/update of Initial Project Period Start and End Dates. In the past, this information was not always available when new grants were loaded into ACRES. If there is no project start date, assessment and cleanup accomplishments are not counted. This new feature allows the Admin to quickly update these important fields.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.040) was released Tuesday, May 26th.

All ACRES Users

  • Cleanup Funding Table – moved to top of section 

    The table for Cleanup funding on the Property Profile Form (PPF), Part 2 and on the associated work package review pages, now displays at the top of the section under the Cleanup Activity initial/completion date fields. This move makes the funding table location consistent with the Assessment and Redevelopment funding table locations. Previously the table was at the bottom of the section.

  • Cooperative Agreement (CA) Home Page – Comment field

    The Cooperative Agreement Comment field, located at the top of the CA Home page, has been removed from the page. This is an old field that users do not access. Removing the link simplifies the top of the CA Home page.

CAR Users

  • Quarterly Report improvements
    • Delete capability has been added to the Quarterly Reports function. If you wish to delete a report that has NOT been submitted to the Project Officer (PO), click the green ‘Delete Quarterly Report’ button (located at the top of each report page in the Profile Information section). Once reports have been submitted to the PO, they cannot be deleted.
    • Funding information from previous reports was not displaying in the Funds Expended table correctly. This issue has been resolved and previous funding, including ‘Costs Incurred to Date’ and ‘Total Remaining’, now display.
    • At a request from users, several text box titles have been changed to more meaningful names (example: “Cost Share and Leveraged Options” has been updated to “Cost Share and Leveraging Information”).

EPA Users

  • Regional Status Tab

    Sort capability has been re-added for the report columns “Status Since” and “Owner”.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.030) was released Tuesday, April 28th.

All ACRES Users

  • Cooperative Agreement Home Page – new property map

    A new property map is displayed on the ACRES Cooperative Agreement (CA) Home page that highlights properties associated to the user’s CA. The map allows users to quickly look at all of the properties, identify any errors, and prevent the creation of duplicate properties. The map is located at the top of the ‘Properties Addressed by this Cooperative Agreement’ section. An icon appears for each associated property. Click any icon and the property name and address are displayed with a link to open the property’s home page. Great visual for users – suggested by one of our CAR users!

  • Find PROPERTY/COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT/TBA tab

    The filter option for the ‘Cooperative Agreement State’ field listed the states in order by state abbreviation, however displayed the state name. States, for example, that began with the letter “M” or “N” appeared to be a bit out of order. The listing is now in alpha order by state name.

CAR Users

  • Quarterly Report – new tab displays reports in progress

    A new tab is available on the CAR Home page to provide easy access to quarterly reports in progress. Click the ‘Open Quarterly Reports’ tab (located next to the Open Work Packages tab) to display a list of all quarterly reports that are either in progress or have been returned for clarification. Note the number next to the tab title that indicates the number of reports in the list. The listing provides a direct link to the reports and information for each that includes: CA Recipient Name, CA number, the reporting quarter, the date submitted, the project officer assigned and the report action (edits in progress, returned for clarification).

EPA Users

  • Regional Performance Report

    Two new columns have been added to this report to display the Initial Project Start Date and the Initial Project End Date. These appear next to the Current POP Date column (which displays a date if the grant was extended or the end date otherwise updated).

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.020) was released Tuesday, March 31st.

All ACRES Users

  • Property Deletion/Disassociation from a Cooperative Agreement

    In the past, it has been difficult to delete an erroneous property record. It required a call to the ACRES Help Desk and time. A new feature has been added on the Property Profile Form (PPF) which allows CARs to mark a property for deletion or to mark it for disassociation from the Cooperative Agreement. The new feature is located at the top right hand side of the PPF Property Profile section. CARs should click the delete/disassociate box and then choose a reason (mandatory). Users are asked to select from: Duplicate Property, Cancelled (no work completed), Not a Brownfields Property, Associated to Wrong CA, or Other (enter text in box). Like all other ACRES work packages, you must submit this to your Project Officer for approval. Project Officers will notice that a new work package displays on their Home page when a property assigned to one of their CAs has been marked for deletion or disassociation. The work package will have a status of “Property Marked for Deletion or Disassociation” and the status is displayed in red font. The PO should click the “Review Data” link for the property and make sure that the deletion will not negatively affect existing accomplishment counts. If this is a possibility, a warning message is displayed in the message section located just underneath the Profile Information section. If all is well, approve the work package. If there is an issue, a note can be added in the Reviewer Feedback text box and the work package returned to the CAR for clarification.

    This new feature will allow for a faster deletion/disassociation process. It also provides several levels of review to prevent an accomplishment count from being deleted (especially important at the end of the fiscal year when final counts are extremely important and difficult to correct).

  • ACRES Bulletin

    A new 2014 ACRES Bulletin was emailed to users on March 2nd. If you’d like to view other versions of the bulletin, simply click the View Previous Bulletins link at the top of the bulletin. There are some informative and pertinent articles for using ACRES (see Frank’s Tips sections).

  • Area-Wide Planning (AWP) Grants 

    Grant Fact Sheets for the twenty 2015 AWP grant awards are now available for viewing. 

CAR Users

  • New Property Add – Address Entry Made Easier

    When entering information for a new property record, ACRES now auto-populates your city and state when you enter the zip code. Note that the zip code field has been moved to precede the city and state fields. This is another time saver for data entry.

  • Notification that PO has Work Package > 30 Days

    In your email notification (the one you’ve opted to receive weekly, monthly, or as it happens), you will now receive notification if your PO has had one of your work packages in their queue for 30 days or more. The PO will also receive notification. This has been added to help prevent a back log of work packages that need attention.

  • Quarterly Performance Report

    Information entered into the Project Progress task table will be copied to subsequent Quarterly Reports to save data entry time. Because this is status information that may reflect completed tasks, this information will be available for updating at the start of the new quarter’s report. Table information should be reviewed and then updated as needed.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.010) was released Wednesday, March 4th.

All ACRES Users

Quarterly Performance Report

  • To ensure that data entry is not lost, when a user enters text into any of the text boxes and moves to a new tab on the report, the text is automatically saved without having to click the ‘Save’ button at the bottom of the page. 
     
  • Statistical information on the quarterly performance reports is being extracted to track the success of the new report. Available for EPA management, stats tracked include the number of quarterly reports submitted, the number of reports submitted on time, and the number of reports approved. The statistics are tracked by region.

Closed Grants

  • The ACRES database was updated with closeout information from the Integrated Grants Management System (IGMS). Although many project officers do close out their grants in ACRES, there were many grants that should’ve been marked as closed that were displaying as open. This update will eliminate confusion caused by the opened/closed discrepancy.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.01.000) was released Monday, February 9th.

All ACRES Users

  • Leveraged Funding Information
    A date/time stamp is now captured when leveraged funding is modified (added, updated or deleted) on the Property Profile Page.
     
  • Area Wide Planning (AWP) Grants
    A table that isn’t applicable to AWP grants has been removed from the AWP Cooperative Agreement Home page. The table, used to display Anticipated Performance Measures, is for Assessment, Cleanup, RLF and State/Tribal grants only. This simplifies the AWP Home page and removes unneeded information.
     
  • Region 5 “BG” Grants
    Using data extracted from IGMS, approximately a dozen ‘BG’ grants were added to ACRES for Region 5.

EPA Users

  • Regional Performance Report
    This report has been updated to include a column for the Period of Performance (PoP) Date (8th column from the left). This column replaces the Project Period End Date column. The PoP Date is a more meaningful date for tracking a property through the work flow.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.240) was released Wednesday, January 14th.

All ACRES Users

  • Quarterly Progress Reports

    • Quarterly Progress Reporting is available to all users for entering/editing/approving their quarterly reporting requirements for cleanup grants.

      CAR users can access the report from their Cooperative Agreement (CA) Home page. If you are associated to a cleanup grant, a green button will display in the CA Profile Information section. Click the green button, 'Generate Quarterly Report', and the progress report displays. Enter information in all applicable fields (note that report information is organized by tabs) and then submit to your project officer for review/approval using the last tab, Review & Submit.

      Project Officers can access reports that have been submitted for their approval by clicking the ‘Quarterly Reports to Review’ tab located in the middle of their Home page. All submitted reports will be listed under the tab.

      Once a quarterly progress report has been submitted and approved, it is available for view only. Reports from previous quarters are accessible on the CA Home page. Click the ‘View Previous Quarterly Reports’ link and click to select a specific report.

      Reports can be printed at any stage (during CAR initial entry, during project officer (PO) approval process, and after the report is approved/final) using the ‘Print’ button at the bottom of the report.

    • An optional data table that records Task Based Funding is available under the Finance tab on the Quarterly Progress Report. Some regions track financial information to this detail and others do not. The table is collapsed and does not display unless data is added. To access the table and enter data, click the box next to ‘Click here to add optional task-based funding’ which can be found under the Funds Expended table.
  • View Cooperative Agreement Profile Information link removed 

    The 'View Cooperative Agreement Profile Information' link, located on the top of the CA Home page, has been removed. It displayed data fields that were rarely, if ever used. The ability to update the old fields was removed over a year ago when the Project Officer Module was redesigned.

CAR Users

  • Area Wide Planning Grants
    CARs can now enter leveraged funding for Area Wide Planning (AWP) grants. Previously leveraged funding data entry was restricted to Project Officers. To add or update this funding, navigate to the AWP Cooperative Agreement Home page and then scroll to the Area Wide Planning - Leveraged Funding section. Existing funding information is displayed and can be modified by typing new data inside the data field box. To create additional funding, click the ‘Add Leveraged Funding’ link, enter the data and click the ‘Save Changes’ button.

EPA Users

  • Quarterly Progress Report
    Project officers can now edit quarterly progress report information that is sent to them for review, similar to the edit capability provided for property work packages that need reviewing. This supplements the ‘Return for Clarification’ function which notifies the CAR that updating is needed. The edit capability is intended for cases where small, quick changes can help to finalize the report. To access the report, click the ‘Quarterly Reports to Review’ tab on your Home page. Click the ‘Review Report’ link to access a specific report. The report data is listed on a single scrollable page. To edit any of the data fields, click the ‘Edit’ link located at the top right hand corner of any section title bar. This action provides access to all of the report information. Use the tabs at the top of the page to move from section to section. After all changes are completed, click the ‘Save and Go to QA’ button. Then finalize your review and click the ‘Accept’ button.
  • Return for Clarification
    The capability to return a work package to a CAR for clarification has been expanded. Work packages that were submitted to national program review and sent back for clarification previously could not be then returned to the CAR. The PO will see the ‘Return to Submitter for Clarification’ button available for these work packages so they can be sent back to the CAR.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.230) was released Tuesday, December 9th.

All ACRES Users

  • 2014 Grants in ACRES 
    The 2014 Brownfields grants have been added to the ACRES database. Users can now add grant and property information to their new grants. In addition, older grants that met the criteria were closed and supplemental funding has been added to existing grants as appropriated.

Property Search

  • Find Property
    When a Cooperative Agreement Recipient (CAR) clicks the “Find Property” tab, this feature now automatically filters the search results to list only properties in the CAR’s state. Previously the results listed all properties within the region. This update will reduce the amount of time it takes to display the results and also reduce the number of properties listed. The CAR can expand the search to include other states within the user’s region by clicking on additional state names or ALL in the filter. This improvement was requested by one of our ACRES CAR users.
  • View as Map
    A new zoom and pan capability has been added to the property results map so that users are not constrained by their specific search criteria. To try this new feature, click the Find Property tab, reduce the number of properties selected using the filter (e.g. select a CA type of “Assessments” and announcement years of 2010-2012), and click the View as Map tab. Zoom out on the map using your mouse (or drag the zoom bar on the left side of the map) and you’ll notice other ACRES properties are displayed on the map which are located outside the original search area.

Property Profile Form (PPF) – Page 2

Observant users will notice that grant specific sections on the PPF (page 2) contain a new green section title box. Grant specific sections include Assessment, Cleanup and Redevelopment funding sections. Grant universal sections still have the ACRES blue box. This differentiates the two so that when users update their property information, they can recognize that changing some fields will affect more than just the property they are working on (universal fields).

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.220) was released Wednesday, November 12th.

All ACRES Users

  • ACRES Connection Timeout Extended
    The connection timeout for ACRES has been extended to 2 hours. This will allow users who are entering detailed text or financial information more time to complete their data entry without worrying about being logged off. Typically for computer applications, connections are closed (timed out) after 5 minutes of inactivity to ensure that connections do not stay open indefinitely.

  • ACRES Quarterly Bulletin 
    The ACRES Quarterly Bulletin was distributed by email on Thursday, October 30th. It highlights successes in ACRES and provides tips for using the system. If you are not currently on the distribution list and would like to be, please send a request to [email protected].

  • Property Profile Form (PPF) – Geographic Info just got easier
    For users interested in fine tuning the location of a property, the Google map pin on the PPF (Part 1) can now be “dragged and dropped” which will update the property’s latitude and longitude. For cases where the property is large or the actual contamination may be at the back of a property or the actual location is a short distance from the location marked on the map, this new feature will allow the user to move the pin point to the exact site location on the property. To use this feature, click the “Edit Fields” link on the property’s PPF, Part 1 in the Property Geographic Information section. Then click and hold the pin point, drag to the new location and release. The lat/long is automatically updated. 
    Note: the property address is not updated when the pin point is relocated.

  • Automated Quarterly Report 
    This new automated report has been beta tested by several “pioneers” and some improvements will be added before the report is available for all cleanup grant users.
    • Project Progress Task Names 
      This first improvement allows the user to enter their own task names (instead of using pre-populated names that may or may not match the names the region has used in the past). These names will be retained for all of the Cooperative Agreement’s reporting quarters. The names can also be edited should the user decide to change the task title.

    • An informational line has been added to the top of the report to notify users that attachments need to be emailed to the Project Officer. Supporting documents cannot be attached to ACRES at this time

Project Officers

  • Find Cooperative Agreement Tab
    The header on the Find Cooperative Agreement (CA) tab results page now displays the CA number information that was entered in the search filter. This allows the user to quickly view the selection criteria on the results listing.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.210) was released Tuesday, October 14th

All ACRES Users

  • ACRES Automated Quarterly Report
    This new feature has been released to several “pioneers” for testing the capture of quarterly report information for FY2015, Quarter 1. Feedback from the first users will be incorporated into the report over the next several months to ensure the report meets user needs. The first grants to have automated report capability will be cleanup grants only. Other grant types will have automated report capability rolled out during 2015.
    The automated report will be available to all CAR and Project Officer (PO) users for their cleanup Cooperative Agreements (CA) beginning 2nd quarter of 2015.
    • CARS – a new button will be displayed in the Profile Information section of the CA Home page. When the user clicks the button, the new report will allow them to enter information for Project Progress, Funding, Narratives, and Property-Specific
    • POs – a new tab titled “Quarterly Reports to Review” will be displayed on the Project Officer tab bar. The new tab will list any quarterly reports submitted by CARs that are the PO’s responsibility to review. A link is provided to each report which will provide a display of all report fields and an option to either approve the report or return it to the CAR with a request to clarify report information.
    • Once the Quarterly Reports have been approved, they will be available to both the CAR and PO to view/print in PDF format from the CA Home page.

  • Property Profile Form (PPF) Text Fields
    Text area fields are now updating correctly. Previously, if the user wanted to update the Property Highlights or History text boxes for a property associated to multiple CAs, validation sometimes prevented changes from being saved.

CARs

  • A Help icon is available for Leveraged Funding fields. The new icon is available wherever a leveraged funding is found on the Property Profile Form (PPF), Property Home, and Cooperative Agreement Home pages. The help text displayed is:

    The term "leveraged" refers to those non-EPA Brownfields funds that have some link or nexus to the efforts of an EPA cooperative agreement-funded activity. (State/Tribal 128a funding, Targeted Brownfields Assessments, Brownfields RLF loans/subgrants, or any other EPA Brownfields grants or resources provided by other project partners are NOT counted as leveraged.)

  • A Help icon now provides an explanation for the acres cleaned up field on the PPF, Part 2. The help text displayed is:

    The number of acres that have been cleaned up is only the acreage for the portion of the property that has been addressed by environmental cleanup activities. A property is considered cleaned up when it is made available for reuse as a result of the environmental cleanup activity.

Project Officers

  • JT Training for POs 
    A refresher on ACRES Job Training was provided to EPA POs on September 25th. The PowerPoint presentation used during the training has been added to the ACRES Information page. 

  • Project Officer Module
    The Place of Performance section, which is no longer used, has been removed from all the JT screens including data entry and review/submit & approve screens.













































































































































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Administrators

  • Cooperative Agreement Funding Update
    The ability to correct initial funding amounts and to add supplemental funding to a CA has been added to the Admin utility tab. This will allow the Admins to quickly correct funding information discrepancies.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.190) was released Tuesday, August 19th

All ACRES Users

A small amount of older supplemental funding was determined to be missing from ACRES this month. It resulted in a discrepancy between the funding reported in ACRES and the funding reported in the IGMS files. ACRES has been updated and the discrepancy resolved.

Project Officers

  • Project Officer Module
    The Project Officer (PO) module, accessed when the “Manage this Cooperative Agreement” button is clicked, has been simplified so its functions are much easier for the PO to both access and use. Functions that were not useful were removed (7 of the 10 functions). Information for the remaining 3 functions displays on a single page with collapsible sections. Links to the sections are available on the left side bar.
    The three PO Module functions are:
    1. Anticipated Performance Measures (not applicable for Job Training grants)
    2. Sustainability Information – this is currently a place marker for a new feature be added in the near future
    3. Closeout – as well as grant status, closing project officer name, and closeout date, this section now contains 2 text areas to record:
      1. Any Quarterly/Other Reports and Forms not Received
      2. Lessons Learned
    The associated Review and Submit page has also been updated. It is shorter and easier to read. The page allows the PO to click a link to return to any section that might need updating before submitting for National Review/Approval.
    The PO module is available to project officers only for the Cooperative Agreements (CAs) for which the PO is the primary contact.

  • My Regional Cooperative Agreements tab
    This tab has been modified to initially display only the cooperative agreements for which the PO is the primary contact and/or data reviewer. A new link is available at the bottom of the page that allows the user to see all associated CAs to which the PO is associated but not the primary contact/data reviewer. Click the link to display the associated CAs, and then click the Hide link to remove them from view.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.150) was released Tuesday, April 29th.

All ACRES Users

  • Grant Fact Sheet Search
    In 2010, the EPA Brownfields Area-Wide Planning Pilot Project provided funding for 23 communities to develop area-wide plans and specific implementation strategies for integrating the cleanup and reuse of Brownfields sites into neighborhood revitalization efforts. This information was not originally available for the Grant Fact Sheet Search (GFS). It has been extracted from individual links on the Brownfields Area-Wide Planning Program screen and can now be viewed from the GFS. To view this information, from the GFS (http://cfpub.epa.gov/bf_factsheets/index.cfm), use the filters to select a grant type of ‘Area-Wide Planning’ and a grant announcement year of ‘2010’.

Project Officers

  • Project Officer Home Page
    A new column has been added to the “Regional Accomplishments for FY 14” table located at the top of the Home page. It lists counts/dollars for Pending Accomplishments for ALL Fiscal Years. Prior to this release, there was a column that listed pending accomplishment counts for the current fiscal year only. Because of the way the FCA procedure works, some properties will have FY11, FY12 or FY13 listed as the draft FCA fiscal year. These accomplishments were not included in the pending accomplishment count which made it difficult to get a full picture of what is pending. The addition of the new column provides a more accurate view of the number of pending accomplishments that are not yet approved.
    More detailed information on work packages with pending accomplishments can be found on the Regional Status tab.

  • ACRES Project Officer Training Slides
    A new training presentation, similar to those for new ACRES users and experienced ACRES users, has been added to the EPA's ACRES Information page under “Training & Tutorials”. A Quick Reference Guide (PDF) is planned for the near future with more detailed information including answers to typical questions posed to the Help Desk and tips on how to avoid common mistakes made by project officers.

Administrators

  • Cooperative Agreement Update
    Selected Administrators now have the ability to quickly update the POP end dates (because they are sometimes extended for grants) and funding amounts (which also sometimes change).

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.130) was released Tuesday, March 4th.

All ACRES Users

  • Job Training (JT) Home Page
    The JT total funded amount is now displayed in the profile information section of the JT Home page.

  • Program Accomplishment Report (PAR)
    This report has been improved to execute faster. Users will notice 2 new buttons at the bottom of the PAR page – one to generate the report as an Excel spreadsheet and a second to generate the report as a tree. For users who want to only print a spreadsheet, this saves considerable time. Previously you had to wait until the tree report was completed before the Export to Excel feature was available. The report is slated for some needed format improvements in the near future.

    Note that if you wish to sort the spreadsheet, you need to highlight the data rows only (exclude the column title row at the top of the page and the totals line at the bottom of the report) and then use the Excel sort/extract features. To highlight the data rows, holding down the <Shift> key, click on the first data field in the spreadsheet (column A, row 7), scroll to the bottom of the spreadsheet and click the last data field (column I, row number will vary) and all data rows will be highlighted.

  • ACRES Quarterly Bulletin
    The February 2014 ACRES Bulletin was distributed by email on Thursday, February 6th. It highlights successes in ACRES and provides tips for using the system. If you are not currently on the distribution list and would like to be, please send a request to [email protected].

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.120) was released Tuesday, February 4th.

All ACRES Users

  • Add/Associate a New Property
    CAR users who are adding a property to one of their associated CAs will notice that the CA number field is now auto-populated on the Find Property/Add a New Property page. This simplifies the association process.

  • RLF Program Income Funding
    If a loan has been made for any property under a given RLF grant, then the program income funding options appear for ALL properties associated with that CA. Previously, these options became available only after ‘RLF Grant Funds Loaned’ was added to a property. This improvement is a request out of Region 1.

  • Latitude/Longitude Updates Complete
    The last region that needed to provide lat/long updates has completed the task and the 2 year lat/long correction effort is finally complete.

Project Officers

  • Regional Performance Report on Cooperative Agreements
    A new report column has been added to display Total Grant Amount. Previously there were 2 columns to display award amounts, one for Hazardous and the other for Petroleum funding types. These funding types are not applicable to grants that are Section 128(a) State/Tribal, Job Training or Area Wide Planning (previously their funding was displayed in the Hazardous column and can now be found in the new total column).

    Grant amounts for the ARC grants continue to display in the Hazardous and Petroleum award columns, and a summary in the new Total Grant Amount field.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.110) was released Tuesday, January 14th.

All ACRES Users

  • The 2013 grants have been added to the ACRES database and are ready for updating!
  • On the Property Home page, the number of Cleanup Jobs Leveraged now displays in the Cleanup Activities section of the page, directly under the Total ACRES Cleaned Up field.

Project Officers

The Regional Performance Report on Cooperative Agreements has a new Project Officer filter that allows users to display data assigned to a specific project officer (the default is for ‘all’ officers). Also, for users that have responsibility for multiple regions, the report tabs that have a small number of CAs such as the TBA, Area Wide Planning and Multi-Purpose tabs, will display all CAs for the grant type instead of only one region at a time. These tabs typically have less than a dozen CAs to display.

Administrators and Project Officers

An improvement has been added to the Change Owners function so that the ownership of a work package can be changed from one CAR to another without the loss of any data including regional reviewer comments. Previously, reviewer comments were lost when the ownership changed and a package was in “Requires Clarification – Regional Review” status. This change was made in response to help desk emails from Region 7 staff.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.100) was released Tuesday, December 17th.

All ACRES Users

On the Property Profile Form – Page 2, the "Recalculate" buttons have been removed from the Acres Cleaned Up, the Number of Cleanup Jobs Leveraged, and the Number of Redevelopment Jobs Leveraged fields. The buttons were used for a past function that is now obsolete.

Project Officers

The Regional Status tab results page now features an Export to Excel function. Project Officers can create a spreadsheet and then use Excel tools to sort, extract and print regional data in any format they choose. This feature has been added to ACRES at the request of several users who said it would be helpful to see all outstanding work packages in the region on one spreadsheet.

An update was completed to the Regional Performance Report on Cooperative Agreements to ensure that all CAs with an assigned project officer have the officer’s name displayed on the report.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.090) was released Tuesday, November 12th.

All ACRES Users

The November 2013 ACRES Bulletin was distributed by email on Friday, November 1st. If you are not currently on the distribution list and would like to be, please send a request to [email protected].

Project Officers

The Regional Performance Report on Cooperative Agreements has several new helpful features:

  • The report has a new tab that displays data for TBAs. It includes the accomplishment year and project end date.
  • To make it easier to view the CAs assigned to specific project officers, the project officer column has been moved to the front of the report. The column is sortable so all CAs assigned to an officer can be viewed/printed together.
  • Two new fields have been added to the report – number of jobs leveraged and number of dollars leveraged. These are displayed on the right side of the report, next to cleanup jobs leveraged.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.080) was released Tuesday, September 17th.

CARS and EPA Users

  • RLF Grants – New Funding Source Options
    In the last release, two new funding source options were made available:
     
    • USEPA – Brownfields RLF Program Income Loaned
    • USEPA – Brownfields RLF Program Income Subgranted

    Program income is the amount of money received by the recipient, either directly generated by the RLF award, or earned during the period of the award (between the effective date of award and ending date of the cooperative agreement). RLF recipients must use program income according to the terms and conditions set forth in their cooperative agreement.

    More details have been added to ACRES for these options.
    • A date field (optional) is now available
    • The "Name of Entity Providing Funds" field is automatically set to the CAR organization
    • A help icon is available to explain what qualifies as Program Income
    • Program income options appear only if a "USEPA – Brownfields RLF Grant Funds Loaned" has already been added for the property
    • A separate summary line for Program Income is now displayed on the Property Profile Form, the Review & Submit screens for reviewers, the Property Home page and the Cooperative Agreement page.

  • Latitude/Longitude Corrections
    Thanks to the regional staff who researched property lat/long information, approximately 2000 ACRES properties have been updated with improved lat/long data. The staff’s hard work helped eliminate the data entry errors created when lat/long values were hand calculated or obtained from other sources. ACRES now uses Google maps to auto generate the lat/long values, based on the property address. This method is very accurate. ACRES users can also easily update the lat/long on the Property Profile Form screen if needed.

  • Zip Code Corrections
    Approximately 230 properties have zip code corrections, most due to a missing leading zero. The updated properties were almost all in the Northeast where the zip codes start with zero.

    Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.070) was released Tuesday, August 20th.

CARS and EPA Users

  • CAR Navigation
    When a CAR navigates to a specific Cooperative Agreement (CA) and submits a work package for review, ACRES will now return to the CA Home page (ACRES used to return to the CAR Home page). This improvement will save the CAR time when they want to create/submit more work packages for that same CA, which is often the case. This improvement also reduces the potential for entering data under the wrong grant.

  • PPF – Page 2: Indicate Whether Cleanup is Necessary?
    If "Unknown" is selected for this important field, the user must also select a reason for unknown. The wording for two of the reasons has been modified for clarity:

    • Old reason: No end use known
      New reason: End use not yet determined

    • Old reason: Property is not marketable
      New reason: Property marketability is not established at this time

  • Job Training Performance Measures
    Three new Job Training fields were added during the last release, including "Number Participants Entering Training". A data validation ensured that there were at least as many participants entering training as completing it. A change was made to ignore this validation process for quarters prior to the 4th quarter 2013 (before data for the new field were recorded).

  • RLF Grants – New Funding Source Options
    For RLF grants, the first two options in the cleanup funding source dropdown list were:

    • USEPA – Brownfields RLF Loan
    • USEPA – Brownfields RLF Subgrant

  • These first two options have been re-named and two new options for program income are now available:

    • USEPA – Brownfields RLF Grant Funds Loaned
    • USEPA – Brownfields RLF Grant Funds Subgranted
    • USEPA – Brownfields RLF Program Income Loaned
    • USEPA – Brownfields RLF Program Income Subgranted

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

July 23, 2013 - ACRES v. 5.00.060

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.060) was released Tuesday, July 23rd.

CARS and EPA Users

  • PPF – Page 2: Contaminants & Media Affected Information
    The option to select Arsenic has been moved from the "Other Contaminants" list to the "Other Metals" list. In addition, periodic symbols have been added for the two newest "other metals" – Arsenic (As) and Mercury (Hg).

EPA/National Users

  • QA – Property Information Page
    In the review data function, the redevelopment costs have been reformatted to display as nicely as the cleanup cost section. You will notice that the funding information is displayed in wider rows, spaced out for clarity, and the rows alternate in color (blue/white). This should make it much easier to read redevelopment funding information.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

June 25, 2013 - ACRES v. 5.00.050

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.050) was released Tuesday, June 25th.

This version contains release of the 2013 Job Training Grant Fact Sheets and also changes to the Job Training form (JT).

  1. 2013 Job Training Grant Fact Sheets
    The 2013 Job Training Grant Fact Sheets (GFS), a total of 16, were released on June 13th. Several formatting enhancements have been made to the PDF version of the JT document for easier viewing.

  2. Job Training Form - Job Measurements Section
    As with the Property Profile Form in the last release (5.00.040), the JT’s associated paper form is evaluated every three years for new data fields needed and modifications to improve the work flow. The changes listed below are the result of your feedback, needs identified by the ACRES Team, and the approval process.

    • Three new measurement fields have been added:

      1. Number of Participants Entering Training

      2. Number of Veterans Entering Training

      3. Number of Individuals that did not Obtain Employment but are Pursuing Education (e.g., GED, college courses, etc.)

    • Verification has been added to ensure that the total number of participants completing training is not greater than the number of participants entering training. Also, average hourly pay is required for reporting quarters that have participants obtaining jobs.

    • Help text has been added for several of the measurement fields, including the Weighted Average Hourly Wage. You’ll also notice the layout has been updated and is easier to read.

All Users

  • ACRES Comment Fields
    The size of the font for ACRES comment fields has been made uniform for all fields. Previously the font for a couple of comments (e.g. the Regional Reviewer’s comment box for returning a work package for clarification) was tiny and difficult to read.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

May 29, 2013 – ACRES v. 5.00.040

A new version of ACRES (v. 5.00.040) was released Wednesday, May 29th.

This version contains changes to the Property Profile Form (PPF). The PPF and its associated paper form are evaluated every three years for new data fields needed and modifications to improve the work flow. The PPF undergoes a rigorous evaluation and approval process. The changes listed below are the result of your feedback, needs identified by the ACRES Team, and the approval process.

  1. Indicate Whether Cleanup is Necessary – new Reason field if cleanup unknown
    This important field has three options (one must be selected): Yes, No, Unknown. If you select "Unknown", ACRES will prompt you to select a reason from a list of possibilities. If your reason isn’t on the list, simply select "Other" and you can enter your reason in the text entry box provided.
  2. Contaminants & Media Affected Information – more selection options available
    • Two new contaminant classes have been added to the list of options for Contaminants: Pesticides and SVOCs.
    • Two new media types have been added to the selection options for Media: Building Materials and Indoor Air. A help icon has been added to the Building Materials field to provide clarification for this option. It is defined as:
      • Hazardous building materials include materials that were once intentionally used to construct, renovate, or maintain a building that are now known to be hazardous or contain hazardous substances. Common examples include asbestos, PCBs, mercury, and lead paint.
    • "Other" Metals and Contaminants now have selection options available:
      • For Contaminants, click the box for "select a contaminant". A text box is displayed where you can type in any other contaminant you wish to enter.
      • For Metals, click the box for "select a metal" and a list of metal options displays. You may select as many as apply from the following : Cadmium (Cd), Chromium (Cr), Cobalt (Co), Copper (Cu), Mercury, Nickel (Ni), Selenium (Se), Zinc (Zn), Iron (Fe). If there are other metals not on this list, type the information in the text box provided
  3. Cleanup and Redevelopment Funding – New Field Available. A new text field, Activity Funded, has been added to both the Cleanup Funding Information and Redevelopment Funding Information screens to provide more space to describe the activities. You'll notice that the title for the field adjacent to the new field has been shortened from "Name of Entity Providing Funds and Additional Comments (if applicable)" to "Name of Entity Providing Funds".
  4. Environmental Cleanup Information
    • Cleanup Completion Documentation Type – New Field
      When a cleanup is completed and the associated date is entered on the PPF, the user is now prompted to select the cleanup completion documentation type(s). The two options appear at the top of the Cleanup Information section next to the completion date At least one must be selected. The options are:
      • No Further Action Letter
      • Environmental Professional Certified
    • New Cleanup Funding Type - Cost Share
      A new cleanup funding type, Cost Share, is available on the Cleanup "Add Funding" and "Update Funding" screens. It is available ONLY for Cleanup and RLF cooperative agreements. This is not a leveraged fund so totals for this cost share are displayed on a separate line on the PPF and QA review pages.
    • Subgrant Issuance Date – New Field
      The "Add Funding" and "Update Funding" screens, for RLF cooperative agreements ONLY, have been updated to include a new field Subgrant Issuance Date (this is similar to the RLF loan issuance date). It has been added so that the subgrant can be entered into ACRES during the time period before an actual draw is made under the subgrant (since dollars are entered for draws, not loan/subgrant amounts).
    • Redevelopment & Other Leveraged Accomplishments – Simplified
      This section has been simplified a bit. The "Future Use and Estimated Acreage" and "Actual Greenspace Acreage and Type" fields have been merged into one table "Future Use, Planned, and Actual Acreage". The old information for Actual Greenspace acreage data has been merged into the new table and any text previously entered has been moved to the Property Highlights text box. Note that there were very few properties that had "actual" data to be merged

      The column for multi-story building data now has an area to allow total building square footage to be captured.

Thank you for the feedback you have provided. We appreciate and encourage your continued involvement in reporting defects and recommending ways to improve ACRES. Please contact the ACRES Help Desk at [email protected] or at 703-284-8212 to provide feedback.

April 5, 2013 – ACRES v. 5.00.020

A new release of ACRES (v. 5.00.020) was released Friday, April 5th. Below is a summary of the changes that have been made to the system.

All Users

  • Cancelled Grants
    The display of a Cooperative Agreement’s (CA) status on ACRES pages has been updated and now includes a new icon for CAs that have been cancelled. The "open" icon was also changed to make the status more intuitive.
    "Cancelled Grants" has also been added as a filter option on the "Find Property/Cooperative Agreement" tab. The new option can be found in the Cooperative Agreement Status filter section (added to options: Open, Closed and All).

EPA Reviewers

  • Email Preferences
    A new email preference option has been added for EPA reviewers to help identify work packages returned to the grantees for clarification and which still remain in this status. The option allows the reviewer to select the number of days for filtering the work packages to be displayed if a work package I returned for clarification has been in the same status for more than [nn] days

Brownfields

Contact Us about Brownfields
Contact Us to ask a question, provide feedback, or report a problem.
Last updated on October 30, 2024